


Cake Crumbs

by Ally147



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Everlark Birthday Gifts, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2018-12-30 15:53:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 41,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12112107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ally147/pseuds/Ally147
Summary: A collection of all the stories and drabbles I've contributed to Everlark Birthday Gifts on Tumblr. Ratings will change depending on the story. If not otherwise stated, assume each chapter hovers around a T or M rating.





	1. Studious

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @joanofshark13
> 
> (Originally titled 'A New Dream' on Tumblr)
> 
> "End of year exams should have been the only thing on Peeta’s mind."

As he steps through the automatic doors of Panem Senior High’s library, Peeta lets out a relieved sigh.

 

Silence. Blessed, beautiful silence.

 

It took him a solid, stupid week to realise he wasn’t going to get any study done at home. Between his brother’s bizarre pubescent relapse of getting his old band back together ( _“We’re gonna make it this time, you’ll see!”_ ), his mother’s snarky, passive-aggressive asides every time she walks past his room, and the never-ending beeping of his father’s baking equipment, the environment there is not conducive to any sort of study.

 

He drops his bag at an empty desk in the far corner, under a skylight letting in bright shafts of cold morning sunlight. It’s quieter than he thought it would be, given that their exams are starting next week. It’s only him and two other people he recognises from his year group, heads down over their own books with steaming cups of coffee sitting at their sides. It’s just gone nine-thirty, though; they won’t be alone for long.

 

After an hour of note-taking for his chemistry exam, a soft thump from across the table draws him out. Perched in front of him is a familiar backpack, tattered army green with paperclips where the zipper pulls should be, textbook corners peeking out of the small rips around the edges. At the very top, in faded black marker, the initials K. E glare at him.

 

His heartbeat kicks up at the sight of it, like he’s some hopeless, tragic version of Pavlov’s dog.

 

Peeta steals sneaky, covert glances left and right for the bag’s owner, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Only the pinch-faced librarian shuffles between the stacks and her returns desk, muttering under her breath about things Peeta can only guess at.

 

He tries to get back to his work, but it’s hopeless. Instead, he draws in the margins of his work: a long Rapunzel-like braid, twisting down the length of the paper like a vine.

 

Like magic, when he looks up from his notebook again, she’s sitting before him, rifling through her bag for a textbook and a pencil-case that looks handmade.

 

She matches him in weariness and an intense, obvious desire for the next two weeks to be over with, but Katniss Everdeen is still the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen, the girl he’s been in love with since he first realised what love was, what love could be.

 

But whether he has the right to those feelings, Peeta has never been sure; he’s never spoken to her before. She’s never spoken to him before, either. The closest they’ve ever gotten to trading words happened a few years ago, when she was partnered with him for a dissection in science class — all the times she’d come into the bakery and mutter under her breath for a cheese bun don’t count in his mind. Where he couldn’t bring himself to make the first incision on the poor frog, she stepped right on in, taking the scalpel from his hands and slicing the creature from throat to belly. He’d wanted to say something, _anything_ , but what are you supposed to say to the girl who disembowels your frog while you look away and try to hold your vomit in? Because Peeta sure as hell didn’t know.

 

But even before then, and after, they’d traded glances for years. Sometimes, he thinks he catches her watching him while he’s watching her, but that makes no sense. God, he’s wasted so much time over the years just _waiting_ , figuring he’d have countless opportunities to catch Katniss and tell her everything, have all his dreams answered, one way or another.

 

But now? Now they’re two of maybe fifteen people in the library, and even though there’s still free desks, she’s chosen to share a table with him. Who knows where they’ll be after the next two weeks are over, or if they’ll even see each other again? All of it, all the fears, all the anxiety, all the possible regrets that already threaten to haunt him for the rest of his life, come forth in one, whispered word:

 

“Hey.”

 

She freezes, glances up at him over the top of her textbook. Her silver-grey eyes survey him, like she’s mining his mind for his deepest secrets. He’s almost written her off, gone back to his work, when he hears her raspy, mumbled reply:

 

“Hey.”

 

Peeta swallows; he never planned for her to say anything back. Already his throat feels dry; he’s never felt so much pressure to carry on a conversation before.

 

“It’s… uh… it’s insane, isn’t it?” he stutters. “All this… you know, study.”

 

_Well done._ God, someone needs to smack him out.

 

She shrugs and takes a gulp from the bottle beside her. It smells sweet, like vanilla and roses. Some kind of tea, maybe.

 

“I guess, yeah.”

 

He shifts, turns another page in his notebook even though the one he’s working on is still half blank. “You… um… you couldn’t study at home, either?” God, he’s never had so much trouble speaking before! Words are so easy for him, natural and comfortable, but this… it’s not painful so much as it’s… difficult.

 

She scrawls something else in her notebook before setting down her pen. “I like it here.”

 

“Yeah. I mean… I do, too.” He clears his throat a little too loudly, and the librarian hisses at him to quiet from behind her desk; Katniss shoots the woman a dirty glare when her back is turned, and Peeta can’t help but grin, like she meant the defence for him.

 

“So, um… are you nervous at all?” It’s a dumb question; they’re all nervous.

 

She traces her index finger in a circle over the cover of her textbook. A maths one, with tiny drawings scribbled all over the spine, along the edges of the closed pages and all over the cover until none of the natural colours are visible anymore.

 

“For some more than others.”

 

He shakes his head. “You’ll do fine.”

 

“So will you.” She smiles, just a tiny hint of the thing, but he swears his heart stops.

 

She picks up her pen and cracks her books back open, punches numbers into the calculator sitting beside her elbow. He’s been dismissed, but the few sentences he coaxed from her are more than he could have ever expected. Grinning, Peeta gets back to his own work, the practice equations coming together in his mind with far more clarity than they had earlier.

 

A gentle, languid sort of humming draws him out again around lunchtime. His stomach is a writhing, groaning pit of want for the snacks he has stashed in his bag, but he ignores it for as long as he can to just listen for a while longer.

 

She has a stunning singing voice; he’s known that for over a decade. When she was five, she sang The Valley Song in front of the entire school in a high, sweet pitch that made even the birds outside fall silent. He never heard her sing again after that. He wonders sometimes how much of Katniss died along with her father.

 

The humming isn’t equal to her voice, but it’s close, with the same heart and soul funnelled into every note, even if she doesn’t seem aware that she’s doing it at all. He doesn’t recognise the tune, but it’s beautiful, soft and haunting. In a way, he falls for her all over again just listening to it. He wants to hear her singing always.

 

“What did you just say?”

 

His gaze snaps up to meet hers, his stomach sinking to somewhere around his knees with each passing second. She’s staring at him, her eyes unreadable. Did he speak just now? Did he say all of that out loud?

 

Horror runs through him like a storm, crashing and violent without pattern or reason. He shoots to his feet, knocking against the underside of the desk. Katniss looks up at him, her brows furrowed.

 

“Peeta?”

 

“I’ll, uh… I’ll be ...” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder to the stacks behind him. “I need… I need to go.”

 

“Peeta, wait!”

 

He almost kicks his chair over in his haste. He doesn’t look back, but he can feel the burn of Katniss’ gaze following him away, matching the heat flaring up his cheeks.

 

He stops in the foreign language section, presses his forehead against the cool steel of the shelves. He could better understand the books here than what just happened with Katniss. He never knew how people could blurt out their deepest secrets without being aware of it. It always seemed stupid, beneath him somehow; he’s been living with his feelings for Katniss for thirteen years now, and not once has anything so moronic happened.

 

Peeta closes his eyes and plots a course back to the desk that doesn’t involve Katniss seeing him, or him seeing her — maybe he could crawl back along the floor or something?

 

He jumps as a small set of hands land on his shoulders. They twist him around, push him back against the shelves with more strength than he expects.

 

His eyes fly open and meet with a pair of smoky grey ones, set with a flinty glint of something like determination.

 

But he still can’t quite believe it. “Katniss?”

 

She shushes him and leans in, presses her lips to his in a whisper of a kiss so light he feels nothing at all and everything at once.

 

As quick as it happened, it ends. Her hands slip from his shoulders and hang limp at her sides. The foot of space between them might as well be miles for the echoing cold he feels.

 

It was a wisp of a kiss, no more than a second, but Peeta’s gasping, reeling for breath like he’s run a marathon.

 

“Katniss,” he whispers. “Wha… why?”

 

The smooth olive skin of her cheeks flush a bright shade of pink. “I just… I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see you again, after all this,” she admits, her teeth nibbling down on her lush bottom lip. It’s all Peeta can do not to swoop in and take over the work for her. “I didn’t want to… after what you just said… I had to…”

 

“You had to what?” he presses her when she trails off. His hands snake up her arms and settle on her shoulders, keeping her in place as her gaze darts around them, seeking out the nearest exit.

 

“I had to know what it was like, just once.”

 

“Just once, huh?”

 

He moves his hands up to cradle her cheeks, cuts off her words before she can speak them and kisses her again. He can’t not kiss her again. Her confession winds through him like alcohol, warming and drugging him through, narrowing his world to nothing but the girl in front of him. Her lips are the softest things he’s ever felt, parting just slightly beneath his to let him in to learn her: how she tastes, how she feels, how she sounds when he lets the tip of his tongue run the sensitive length of her lower lip, how she shivers in his hold and lets out a rattling gasp when he takes that lip between his own and suckles.

 

When he pulls away, just the barest inch, it’s not because he wants to. He reels for air as she stares at him with trepidation and wonder, a disbelief he knows is matched in his own gaze.

 

“You like me, too,” he whispers, his eyes closed, his forehead pressed against hers. “Real or not real?”

 

He can feel her tremble beneath his hold, but she nods, a quick, small thing, but there.

 

“Real, but what can happen, really? After exams are over, we’ll both work, then go off to different colleges. We’re kidding ourselves if we think anything can happen, aren’t we?” But she looks like she’s begging him, hoping to be proven wrong.

 

He laughs, and she scowls. He can’t help it; when he left the house this morning for the library, he never, not once in his wildest dreams, pictured his day going anything like this.

 

He grips her hands and pulls her close, kissing her again until they’re both breathless.

 

“Katniss, after these exams are over, you and I are going to have a good, long talk about why these kisses cannot possibly be the only ones we ever share.”


	2. On The Cusp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for am2c
> 
> "One week out from his thirtieth birthday, and with nothing crossed off his bucket list, Peeta Mellark calls his best friend for reassurance."

Whenever Peeta Mellark envisioned his thirtieth birthday, back when the occasion was still far-off and hazy with dreams, he imagined a few milestones might have been ticked off his ‘Before Thirty Bucket List’:

 

He should be in a job, in the field he studied in, that he loves. It should not be a chore going to work every day, and he should wake up in the mornings looking forward to the day. But not so much that he brings his work home with him. There should be a clear distinction, a line that should never be crossed between the professional and the personal.

 

He should be married to the woman of his dreams. He should have dated her for at least two years and ideally, his family would like her, but in the face of true love he’d be more than happy to make concessions to keep everyone happy. They should have enough in common to make things comfortable, and enough in difference to keep things interesting. They should have had an outdoor wedding in the springtime, with just their close friends and family in attendance, and honeymoon somewhere close to the shore.

 

(He never acknowledges out loud, or on the piece of paper he wrote all this on, that the sex should be incredible. Mind-blowing if they can manage it. They should be in perfect sync with each other and know each other’s bodies better than their own. He almost sighs again at the thought of it. _Mind-blowing_.)

 

(He also doesn’t want to admit he’s had a certain someone in mind ever since he devised the list, but he can’t — there’s no way —)

 

He should have at least two children running underfoot. Maybe another on the way. He’s always wanted three kids. It seems to him such a tidy number, not too many, not too few. And perhaps a dog or two, too. He’s always been especially fond of beagles.

 

He should have his own home, and his own car, and should be making manageable payments on each in time to be a home owner before he retires, which should be right on sixty, or earlier if it can be managed. He doesn’t want him and his prospective wife to be working up until their seventies only to be shoved into a retirement home at the end of it all.

 

He should be well-travelled, proficient in at least one language other than English. Cultured, and with broad horizons. Adventurous, but not to the point that home becomes unattractive.

 

He should have solid hobbies that are his own and not tied in with anyone else’s. He should be independent in every way, to make the time he spends with loved ones all the more meaningful.

 

And above all else, he should be happy. _He should be happy._

 

On March fourth, one week to the day until this birthday, Peeta thinks back on those wishes for his future life, and thinks maybe he should have crossed all those milestones out and replaced them with just one:

 

‘Become Superman’

 

Because that’s what he’s asking of himself.

 

In hindsight, he hasn’t done too badly. He’s done some of the things on the list, just not to the standard he’d hoped.

 

He has a job, not in his field and certainly not one he loves, but it’s enough to make the rent and pay the bills on his shitty apartment. He owns his car, but it wasn’t too big a stretch to save the thousand bucks for the old Corolla more than on its last legs.

 

He’s nowhere near close to married, so even farther from being a dad, but he looks upon his previous twenty-nine years and wonders how he ever believed he could be ready by this point to assist in the rearing of another life, let alone the three he dreamed of.

 

He did get his beagle, though, a sweet little thing always so happy to see him at the end of the day that he named Snoopy, because what else would you name a beagle?

 

He took a semester of French in college, but all he remembers is _je nes comprends pas,_ and that’s all he really needs since even if he did become adventurous and set off, it’s not like he’d understand a damn word of the language, anyway.

 

And happiness… happiness has become a little more abstract the older he becomes, and he’s still not sure he understands it. He thinks he’s happy… ish, anyway.

 

But as Peeta reads over the list by the light of a candle, because at four in the morning he doesn’t want to crack the lights even though he’s lived on his own for a decade, he can’t help but feel… deflated.

 

He knows he’s far too idealistic, too prone to dreams and getting lost inside his head. Katniss tells him so every time they talk. Making a list like this one only serves to make him feel like a failure where no such failing exists.

 

And God, it’s working.

 

He’s had so bloody long to work at least half this shit out. What the hell is he doing with his life if he’s not working towards these goals? He’s stagnated, badly, but when did that happen? When did he become so lost that he just stopped noticing that everything in his life was so… different?

 

He wipes at his stinging eyes. Christ, is he about to cry?

 

He reaches over to his bedside table and yanks his phone from its charger. Snoopy snuffles at the end of his bed but carries on sleeping. The dog could sleep through the apocalypse.

 

He scrolls through the phonebook until he finds the number he wants and presses ‘call’.

 

“Pick up,” he mutters through the ringing. “Please pick up.”

 

Uncountable rings later: “Hello?”

 

“Katniss?”

 

“Peeta?” she mumbles. He hears her sigh, the creaks of the springs in her bed as she rolls over, and the click of her bedside lamp. Her voice, the sounds of her movements that prove she’s real… he feels calmer already. “Peeta, it’s… God, it’s early. Are you all right?”

 

“I’m turning thirty, Katniss.”

 

There’s a beat of confused silence, then: “I know, Peeta. I’m turning thirty soon, too, remember?”

 

“No, you don’t get it. I haven’t done… anything.”

 

“Peeta,” she says on a sigh. “You’ve done plenty.”

 

“I haven’t!” He waves the list around, even though Katniss can’t see it. “Not one thing on my list, Katniss, except my dog.”

 

“You have a list?” She groans. “Peeta, fuck the list, all right?”

 

“You don’t get it!” He throws the list, but it doesn’t go very far. “Nothing on it was hard! None of it should have taken this long.” He sighs and falls back against his pillows. “I should have been… more by now, you know?”

 

“All right.” He listens as she sighs, sits up, brushes her hair out of her face. He can almost see her doing these things if he closes his eyes.

 

“What was the first thing on your list?”

 

This is good. He needs this. Needs his pragmatic best friend to break down his thoughts into manageable blocks.

 

“To get married.” He doesn’t need the list in front of him to know the complete order of things.

 

“O-okay,” she says with a tiny, ever so slight waver, one he thinks only he would be able to hear. “So, what stopped you?”

 

“I never met the right woman.” Yes, he has. He met her ages ago, he’s just been too chicken shit to do anything about it.

 

“And that’s your fault? You can’t blame yourself for that.”

 

“Yeah, I guess, but I still thought — I mean, I’d hoped by now…”

 

“Peeta.” She groans. “Tell me you haven’t been waiting for this magical, mystical unicorn of a woman to just fall into your lap?”

 

“Well… not exactly…” He’s been waiting for her to see him for real, see what he’s been trying to show her for years now, but he can’t tell her that.

 

“Fine.” She yawns, ending it on a sweet sigh. “What was number two?”

 

“I wanted to have my own house by now.”

 

“And what stopped you there?”

 

“I don’t earn anywhere near enough. And after paying rent and bills and whatever else, there’s not enough to put anything away for a deposit.”

 

“Again, Peeta, that isn’t something you can blame yourself for. Besides, unless they’re damn lucky, hardly anyone buys a house on their own. A house is kinda a joint effort.”

 

This is what he needed, to be reminded of all the things he knows, but that he never thought would apply to him because he should have just _wanted_ it enough. “I know.”

 

“Anything else?”

 

“The usual. Learn another language, travel. Become a dad. Things like that.”

 

She’s quiet for a long moment. “You know, Peeta, thirty isn’t that old. Hell, it’s not old at all.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Just because those things on your list aren’t ticked off not, doesn’t mean they never will be.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She’s quiet again before she asks, “Is there anything on your list you can do in a week? You know, to make yourself feel better?”

 

“Go skydiving?” he jokes. “Well… not really. They’re all mostly life goals. Not personal goals.”

 

“Maybe that’s your problem. Maybe you should look at the things you really do want, not the things you think you should want.”

 

He wants nothing more than that, but how much could that cost him? Is he willing to go after what he wants to the potential detriment of all he’s ever known?

 

And if he does, and it all works out… what does he do then?

 

“You’re probably right.” He sighs, closes his eyes. “I love you, Katniss.”

 

She doesn’t reply, but she doesn’t have to. Katniss is a woman of action, not words. She never has to reciprocate the words for Peeta to know she loves him, too, just not the way he wants. “Get some sleep, Peeta. I’ll see you later.”

 

“See you,” he whispers, and she hangs up.

 

**XXXXX**

His birthday isn’t all that different to any other day. He gets a dozen messages that morning from his brothers, his father, and a few old college friends. Katniss calls before he leaves for work with the promise of coming over later that night to make pizza, like they’ve always done for each other’s birthdays since college. It’s enough to push him through the motions of the day and make each passing hour behind that soul-sucking desk a little bit easier.

 

When he pulls up at his apartment that evening, Katniss’ car is already there. He grins and climbs the stairs to the third floor and finds his door unlocked. Snoopy almost barrels him over as soon as he walks in the door.

 

“Hey, buddy.” He scratches the dog behind his ears before he darts off down the hall.

 

Katniss calls from the kitchen, “I’ve already fed and walked him. Don’t let him fool you.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“I made the dough just like you showed me, but I’m not sure…”

 

He follows her voice to the kitchen and sets his hand lightly on her hip to look over her shoulder at the bowl. “Looks good.”

 

“Good.” She turns in hold, but doesn’t move away. Her eyes are locked on his, unwavering, and her hands clutching the edge of his benchtop are covered in sticky dough.

 

“Happy birthday,” she whispers.

 

“Thank you.” Why are they whispering?

 

“Peeta…”

 

She swears and launches herself up on the tips of her toes, grabs at his shirt, and presses her lips to his, soft and smooth and warm and _magical_. Peeta’s too scared to breathe, to shatter the illusion. What if he opens his eyes and it’s not real?

 

There’s no tongue, nothing crazy, just a chaste press, a test, experimental. He fears anything on his part might be introducing a few too many variables. But it’s perfect. About as perfect a first kiss between friends could be. As he starts to return it, she pulls away, by the tiniest inch, something indefinable clouding her grey eyes.

 

“What was that for?” he whispers.

 

She tips her head downwards, breaking their eye contact. “Talking to you about your list… it got me thinking a little bit about mine.”

 

He can’t help but chuckle. “Yours? You have a list?”

 

“Of a sort. I don’t want to plan my life out, Peeta. I don’t want to hold myself to rigid, impossible standards that I get upset about when I can’t fulfil them.”

 

He swallows. “Oh.”

 

“There was really only one thing I wanted to do, Peeta.”

 

His heart leaps into his throat, and his fingers play with the hem of her shirt swaying about her hips, too scared to wrap around and hold her. But if he’s reading what she’s saying right…

 

“What did you want to do, Katniss?”

 

She lets out a heavy sigh and looks back up at him, her eyes still clouded with that something, but also with that gritty determination that he loves.

 

“I wanted to tell you, Peeta Mellark, that I lo — I really, really like you. More than that, I think. That I want… more, I think. I mean… you know, if you wanted, we could —”

 

There’s nothing left to do or say but to wrap his arms around her and kiss her again. And again and again and again.

 

His head is a thoughtless, blissful whirl. He’s kissing the woman of his dreams, in his shitty kitchen, as dough for their pizza rises and a rambunctious dog dances and whines at their feet. If this is happy, he’s there.

 

And he can cross that off his damn list.


	3. Turnabout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @ishy-fish
> 
> "Katniss Everdeen is part of the competition destroying his family's livelihood. Of course he doesn't want her..."

Something’s wrong.

 

The bakery should be a crush of people come half-past-three: parents picking up loaves of bread to have with dinner that night, or after-school treats for the kids; the first steady trickle of professionals leaving their high-rise offices, grabbing a snack for the slow trek home out of the city; shift workers picking up the last of the sandwiches from lunchtime before they head to work for the night.

 

But there’s no one. Nothing. A cartoon tumbleweed wouldn’t look out of place in Mellark’s bakery right now.

 

The store’s impeccable — he’s had all the time in the world to clean every infinitesimal speck of the place this afternoon — but Peeta sighs and wipes down the counter. Again. If he wipes it down any more, he’ll rub a hole right through the middle of it.

 

“Still no one?” his father asks from behind him, disbelief tinging his tone.

 

“No one,” Peeta confirms without turning around. There hasn’t been anyone for the last two hours. He should have bought his homework with him; he’s got his final exams coming up soon, and he could be getting so much done right now.

 

“But there should be —”

 

Peeta sighs again. “Yeah, there should be, but there’s not.” He can’t even apologise for his tone; he’s too bored and frustrated to give a crap anymore. The space between them fills with the soft jazz music his dad always thought was more welcoming for the customers. So much for that.

 

“Maybe we should close up for the day?” Peeta suggests and he leans back off the counter and straightens his apron. “We’re only open for another hour and a bit anyway, and I’ve already done the cleaning out here.”

 

His father scratches his head, stares out the full floor to ceiling windows onto the busy street. “Give it another half an hour,” he states at last. “The lost hour won’t make too big a difference, not when we’re not making anything.”

 

Peeta nods, but he stopped caring ages ago, when the lunch rush stopped.

 

The doors back to the kitchen shut with a clamour, and Peeta’s alone again. He yawns; he didn’t pull the opening shift that morning, but he woke up early enough for it anyway — the habit’s too ingrained despite his best intentions. Nothing to do, in a cosy room scented with fresh bread and warm sugar, soft music playing in the background… he’s halfway asleep…

 

But something catches his eye, a long, Rapunzel-like braid, as black as ink.

 

And he’d know that braid anywhere.

 

Katniss Everdeen.

 

Counter-hand at Baker’s Delight. One of the biggest chain bakeries in the country, and the reason Mellark’s Bakery is teetering on the brink. The reason his father spends every night tearing his hair out trying to think of new ways to bring in new customers and compete in a market with less and less room for the little guy.

 

She’s the enemy. His father would grumble and say (even if he didn’t _really_ mean it) that just by working there, she’s complicit in the downfall of independent business owners everywhere, as are all the youths of America working for massive chains or departments stores. But Peeta has other things to say.

 

Like, she’s fucking gorgeous, for example. Or that her smile twists his stomach in knots. In a good way. Or that he’s been half in love with her since they were five and in the same pre-school class. Things like that.

 

She’s stopping shoppers on the street across from him — ones that look like they might be about to cross over and see him — engaging them in conversation and handing them small, white flyers. From his spot behind the counter, he can see the eyes of the people she speaks to widen as she hands a flyer over, and the proverbial cartoon cloud of dust they leave in their wake as they tear off down the street to God knows where.

 

He’s about to whip his apron over his head and run across the street to see what all the fuss is about, when a rare jingle of the bell above the door distracts him.

 

“Ms. Sae,” he greets with a wide smile. He’s never been so glad to have a customer. He pulls his hands away from the apron knot at his back and sets them on the counter. “It’s good to see you again.”

 

“Peeta.” Ms. Sae smiles her gummy, gap-toothed smile and glances around. “Quiet today?”

 

He bites back a sigh. “Sure has been. What can I get you?”

 

“A marble rye, and four iced sugar cookies, all pink ones if you can manage it.”

 

“You got it.” Peeta grabs a paper bag from under the counter and takes the tongs from the holder by the racks holding all the breads. “Ms. Sae,” he says as he slips the marble rye into the bag, “did you see what was going on out there? Kat — I mean, that girl out there… what’s she handing out?”

 

“Oh, it’s awful,” Ms. Sae tells him, shaking her head, making her wild grey curls fly. “She works for that disgusting chain bakery up the street — it’s businesses like that destroying businesses like yours, you know?”

 

Peeta fights back the dour retort making its way up his throat, because yes, of course he’s noticed. But Ms. Sae’s just about the nicest lady he’s ever met, and she’s pretty much the only one keeping the business afloat these days with her daily purchases of bread and cookies for her granddaughter.

 

“Anyway, she’s giving out some sort of discount coupon, half-off everything, I think she said.” Ms. Sae reaches into her massive, threadbare handbag and pulls one of the flyers out. “Yes, half-off everything until closing today.” She slides the flyer across the counter. “Throw the thing out, Peeta. That would be best.”

 

Peeta nods and rings up the purchase, sending Ms. Sae away grumbling about heartless corporations and small-town values.

 

Katniss is still out there, though. Still halting shoppers and handing over flyers. Peeta glances down at the one Ms. Sae gave him and screws it up in his hands. It’s a tight ball in his fist as he rushes out the door and runs across the street.

 

As he gets closer, he curses his stupid, pesky _feelings_. They’re the only reason his heart trips up at the sight of the girl he’s been in love with forever in a puffy chef’s hat and sky-blue apron.

 

He calls out, “Hey! Everdeen.”

 

She spins in a slow circle to face him, a smile far too sweet to be genuine pulling at her lips. “Yes, Mellark?”

 

He brandishes the flyer in her face, but she doesn’t flinch at all. If anything, her silver-grey eyes sparkle even more, like she’s challenging him. “What the hell is this?”

 

“It’s a trial we’re doing,” she says as she hands another flyer to another passer-by and sends them off with a smile. “Half price on everything after three. If we’re successful, it might become a daily thing.”

 

“Seriously?” He runs a hand through his hair, catching his fingers on a knot at the back. “Couldn’t you promote this little offer, oh, I don’t know… literally anywhere but here? We’ve had one customer since lunch. One!”

 

She bats her eyelashes. “What, somewhere away from potential bakery customers? What good would that do me?”

 

He grits his teeth. “Get out of here, now.”

 

“No point,” she says airily. “You’re closing soon, aren’t you?”

 

“What difference does it make? Get off this sidewalk! Find your own corner!”

 

She squares her shoulders and steps into his space. His body thrums at her closeness. “Or what?”

 

Peeta swallows and takes another step forward. Their noses are almost touching, their breath meeting and mingling in the narrow space between them, but Katniss stays firm while Peeta’s sure he’s trembling. “Or I might have to get you off myself.”

 

She gives another tight smile, but he can see the shift in her eyes, the spark of something else that makes for an uncomfortably tight fit of his trousers. She clears her throat, takes a step back, and shuffles her remaining flyers into a neat pile. “Fine. It’s nearly the end of my shift, anyway.” She turns away and saunters up the street, pausing at the corner to look back at him. “I’ll see you later, Mellark.”

 

Peeta stares after her long after she disappears, taking deeps breaths to calm his racing heart. He faces the wall and checks in both directions before discreetly adjusting his trousers and running to the bakery.

 

His father’s behind the counter, wiping it down again, watching Peeta with wary eyes. “You talking to that Everdeen girl?”

 

Peeta sighs. When they were kids, his father would give _that Everdeen girl_ and her sister free cookies every time they stepped through the doors. “She was poaching customers. I just told her to go away.”

 

His father grunts. “Good.” He swings his rag over his shoulder and turns towards the kitchen door. “Come grab a crate and start filling it. Might as well make a head-start on the shelter deliveries.”

 

“Sure.” He follows his dad behind the doors and grabs on of the empty crates. On a regular day, before Baker’s Delight set up down the street, they’d fill maybe half the crates, if they were lucky. Today, they’ll fill them all, and then some.

 

“I’ll do breads, you do the cabinets?” his father asks.

 

Peeta nods. “That’s fine.”

 

They work in silence until it’s time to flip the Closed sign over. They aren’t disturbed once.

 

 

**_Later that evening…_ **

 

It’s just gone eleven when he hears it.

 

The steady ping of small stones against his window. He knows it’s her because she hits the pane every single time, without fail. He wouldn’t be surprised to find a crack in the glass from each pebble hitting the same spot.

 

Peeta gets up from his desk and tugs aside the curtains just in time to see Katniss Everdeen mount the dry, rotting trellis below his window and begin a steady climb. He watches with his heart in his throat as she makes her way beyond the first storey with next to no effort and curls her slender fingers around his window frame. He rushes to wrap his arms under hers and coax her in the rest of the way, pulling her against his chest once she’s flat on the floor again.

 

“God, I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he whispers into her hair. He presses kisses all over her crown and forehead, down her nose and to her lips. He hasn’t been able to hold her for weeks now, between their class and work schedules, his family’s detestation of her, and the fact that she’s so rarely home alone. It had taken all he had in him earlier today not to throw her flyers in the trash and kiss her right there on the street for everyone to see.

 

“Sorry,” she murmurs against him. “Next time I’ll come straight to the door. I’ll knock and everything, maybe come with a boom box blasting Peter Gabriel, wake everyone up.”

 

He squeezes her a little tighter. He could talk his dad around, he’s sure of it (he’d been Peeta’s greatest supporter when it came to Katniss, up until he saw her behind the counter of the competition), but his mom…

 

“You weren’t joking when you said later,” he says instead, running his hands down her arms to twine his fingers with hers. He pulls her gently down to his bed and lays her down, fanning her hair out over his pillow before joining her right on the edge.

 

“It wasn’t my idea,” she says. “Earlier, with the flyers, I mean. It wasn’t my idea.”

 

Peeta snorts, trails his hand over her soft cheek. “Obviously.”

 

“Not the campaign or anything, but to do it near your family’s bakery.” She sighs. “I didn’t want to, but he has people who randomly come and check that you’re where you’ve been sent. If you’re not there…” She mimes a knife across her throat. “Snow’s so threatened by you guys.”

 

He scowls. Her boss is a despot that desperately needs to be toppled. “You think he’s threatened by us?” he asks, incredulous. “Why? He could buy us out a thousand times over if he really wanted to.”

 

“Are you kidding?” She laughs. “And risk the wrath of the townspeople? All the people who love you and your dad? The man doesn’t have a death wish. He’d be driven out of town in a haze of fire and pitchforks.”

 

“What townspeople?” he says, a little louder than he means. He goes on in a whisper, “Mellark’s is tanking, Katniss. It’s been tanking for months now. We have hardly any supporters anymore, maybe three or four real regulars...”

 

She shoots him a dour look. “You have a ton of supporters, Peeta. They’d all come back if Snow didn’t have them under his thumb. Snow’s just…” She shakes her head and shudders. “Snow’s crazy, and that Coin woman at the top is even worse.

 

“I’d quit if I could,” she whispers as she leans in to kiss him again. “I hate that working there hurts you and your family so much, and that we can’t tell anyone about us yet. But until Prim graduates high school… and Mom…”

 

He shushes her with another kiss. “Just another couple of months. Don’t worry about it, I get it.”

 

She presses her head against the pillow and studies him, her eyes bright with affection. “You do, don’t you,” she whispers, more to herself. She tips her forehead against his and sighs. “I won’t come by next time he asks, promise. I really do hate it."

 

“I know you do. I don’t like it either, but I understand.” He kisses her again and rolls onto his other side to flick the switch off on his lamp, leaving them bathed in soft moonlight. “So, can you stay tonight?”

 

“Of course I can. You have a promise to make good on.”

 

His lips tug up into his first smile of the day. “Really? And what that might be?”

 

“You said earlier that you’d get me off yourself.” She grins and sits up, tugs her sweater over her head, revealing her naked body underneath. “I’m going to hold you to that.”


	4. One Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @guava-juice
> 
> "An unexpected admission at Prim's wedding gets Peeta and Katniss thinking about their own Happily Ever After."

Peeta chuckles every time he glimpses the bride. Everywhere he looks, Primrose Everdeen — or Hawthorne now, he supposes — is always on the periphery of his vision.

 

It’s a massive venue: a huge ballroom adjoining the ritzy Snow Hotel, decked out with large vases filled with long-stemmed white lilies and roses, and thousands upon thousands of delicate golden fairy lights on copper wires strung about the room in place of harsh overhead lights. But Prim’s dress — a fluffy, blinding white, pavlova-esque concoction complete with a hoop skirt dotted with tiny, glittering crystals and a train fit for royalty — is big enough to reach into all four corners no matter where in the room she’s standing.

 

But while his eyes are following the bride, it’s not her that he’s focussing on.

 

Katniss, dutiful sister and maid of honour, is holding the train while Prim and Rory make their rounds about the room. Peeta watches her lips war between a proud smile and an irked scowl that blur and melt together into something altogether beautiful. What to call it? A scile? A smowl?

 

He takes another sip of his champagne and waves when Katniss glances at him across the room. He holds up his glass in a mock salute; she flips him the bird. His smile grows even wider.

 

Because even as she’s pissed off, uncomfortable in her heels and itchy dress the same colour as a pink highlighter, cursing her sister and her questionable taste in attire, and likely counting down the seconds until they can leave without making Prim cry, Katniss Everdeen is still the most gorgeous, sexy, incredible thing he’s ever seen.

 

And she’s his. And he’s hers. Even after seven wonderful years together, he still pinches himself, sure he’s just imagined everything that has happened between them, that he’s still that same eighteen-year-old too scared to make a move, terrified at the prospect of graduation and interstate colleges.

 

Peeta doesn’t know anyone else at his table, so he makes only the requisite small talk — how he knows the bride and groom, what his job is, whether the fine weather they’ve enjoyed for the past week will hold through the weekend — in between checking his emails.

 

He’s responding to a request for a potential catering gig the following month when Katniss lands in her seat beside him and fans herself with a napkin.

 

He tucks his phone back in his pocket. “Having fun?” he asks with a smirk.

 

“I love Prim, really,” she says as she kicks her heels off beneath the table, “but this…”

 

“Is sort of tacky?” He winds his arm around her shoulders and draws her close, strokes his thumb over the soft skin of her upper arm.

 

“No _sort of_ about it.” She plucks a carrot stick from the crudité platter in the centre of their table and sighs. “It’s ridiculous. That train alone weighs at least thirty pounds. You’re not supposed to watch that gypsy weddings show and get _inspired_. When we get married, it’s not going to be anything like this.”

 

His heart stutters in his chest. They’ve talked marriage before — or, rather, he has — but it’s always been in vague, hypothetical terms, relegated to the far-off future when they were both finished with college and settled into real jobs and secure enough in their futures to take the next step.

 

For as long as the idea’s been in his mind — and it’s been in there for a while, he admits — Katniss has always been noncommittal, answering his questions and offering her opinion with half-hearted hums and shrugs that leave him more confused than when he started. He’s spent years wondering if she’s just humouring him, if the years she spent picking up after her dead father and shattered mother ruined the prospect for her altogether.

 

But to question her statement now would only devolve into a bigger argument than he’s willing to deal with right now, so he responds the only way he knows how.

 

“Oh, so it’s _when_ now, is it?” he teases.

 

Her cheeks flush, as though she’s just realised her words. He waits for her to take it back, to tell him she never meant it and run as fast as she can for the closest restroom and make a hasty escape out an open window. But she surprises him, the way she always does.

 

“You know what I mean.”

 

“I’m not sure I do.” He takes a chance and leans in, rests his forehead against her temple. The sound of the world around them falls away, leaving behind the irreverent hammering of his heart. “When we get married,” he whispers close to her ear, “what would you like?”

 

“You,” she breathes, after barely a heartbeat. “You, waiting at the top of the altar. I don’t need anything else.”

 

“Really? You don’t want a meringue dress of your own?” She wrinkles her nose, and he has to inch backwards to laugh. “A horse-drawn cart to pull you up to the church? A tiara?”

 

Now she lets loose a loud, carefree laugh; the rest of their table shoot them dirty looks over their carrot and celery sticks.

 

“I don’t need anything else,” she says again. “Just you and me.”

 

“Then you’ll have it.” He leans in again, presses a soft, warm kiss to her lips. “One day.”

 

She chases him back and kisses him again. He sighs and holds her close; how did he ever get so lucky?

 

When she pulls away, it’s with a glint of a promise in her eyes that makes him gasp.

 

One day.  



	5. Dog Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @laurabaptista. 
> 
> I intend to continue this story at a later date, so while I'm adding it here, I may remove it later and make it its own separate story.

Peeta’s run out of excuses.

 

The questions have been building up for almost a year, since one of Charlie’s classmates brought theirs in for show-and-tell. Peeta miscounted the kid’s parents’ orders of bread rolls and cookies for a month after that in thanks for the non-stop barrage of questions that had been invited into his life:

 

_“I want a puppy, Dad!”_

_“But Damien has a puppy, Dad!”_

_“Can we get a puppy, Dad?”_

_“Why can’t we get a puppy, Dad?”_

_“Dad! Can we get a puppy, please?”_

_“Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? DAAAAAAAAADDDDD?”_

 

He caved, as he knew he always would. He can’t say no to his own little mini-me, not when he turns on those big blue eyes and juts out that bottom lip. He’s been a slave to his son since the first time he laid eyes on him.

 

But he’ll be damned if he capitulates to a puppy. Puppies take work, and mean time off from the bakery that he can’t afford to take.

 

Compromising with a six-year-old is a task in and of itself, but he steels himself, and waits for a time when Charlie should be at his most amendable.

 

So, like the sneaky wimp he is:

 

“What if we adopted a dog that’s a tiny bit older?” he asks as Charlie’s wrapped up in his fluffy bedspread, right on Sleep’s door. “What do you think about that?”

 

Charlie eyes, hooded and blinking just a moment ago, widened and glittered. “Really? You mean it?”

 

Peeta smiles and smooths back Charlie’s messy curls, so much like his own when he was that age. “I really do.”

 

Charlie yawns again and settles back against his pillows with a smack of his lips. “Awesome,” he says, the word slurring as he starts to fall asleep.

 

Peeta pads back down the stairs and tosses himself atop his bed. His laptop is waiting, open. He’s scoured different adoption sites, the local pound, even local listings, but nothing seems right.

 

After a few more cursory searches, he comes across a Facebook page dedicated to rehoming dogs in his local area. He skims through the listings; some are obvious scams, pictures of too-perfect puppies frolicking in too-perfect fields for a too-perfect price. Some are in the golden years of their already short lives, and as much as he’d love to rehome an older dog, he can’t have Charlie get too attached just to break his heart so soon after.

 

There’s a listing at the bottom of the page that looks promising, but the date next to it tells him it’s been up for almost a month. He clicks on it and gasps. It’s perfect.

 

A little beagle, female, only a year old. Artemis, or Artie for short. Fully vaccinated and vet-checked, microchipped and insured. Likes walks and loves small children. Toilet-trained and good on a lead (or as good as a beagle can be). Comes with own bed and toys. They’re asking a two-hundred-dollar fee plus rehoming costs, but compared to some of the local breeders and pet stores he scoped out early on, she’s a bargain.

 

He types out a quick message on his phone to the seller, asking if the dog’s still available, and sends it off before he can second-himself. He feels almost nervous — like he’s put himself on display or something — as he sets the alarm on his phone (just a precaution; he hasn’t slept past five in the morning in years), sets it on his bedside table, and melts back into his pillows.

 

**XXX**

When he breaks for lunch, he has a response from the seller. His eyes grow wide as he looks over the long-winded message, more like a detailed questionnaire quizzing him on every aspect of his life to gauge his suitability for dog ownership as though he’s adopting a child.

 

He supposes he shouldn’t mind all that much — if it were him parting with a beloved pet, he’d want to make sure it was going to the right home, too. But if this was the treatment they were bestowing on every potential adopter, it’s no wonder the listing was so old. He doubts anyone could live up to these expectations.

 

He keys in his answers to all the questions as best he can: he’s a baker and usually done with work by two or three at the latest; unmarried but with a six-year-old son; yes, he’ll have plenty of time to take Artie for walks in the afternoon; he hasn’t owned a dog since he was a child, but he remembers it well (and besides, that dog was a basset, so he’s got experience with hounds) and so on and so forth until he’s sure this person knows him better than everyone else in his family.

 

Peeta sighs and sends the responses off, but he doesn’t have a good feeling about any of it.

 

**XXX**

Peeta’s in his car waiting for Charlie’s class to break for the day when his email pings again.

 

It’s another response from the seller, with another list of questions. Peeta tips his head back against the top of his chair and sighs before preparing his new answers, but a small note at the bottom catches his eye.

 

_If you’d like to meet Artie, I’ll meet you at the park on 12 th, by the Snow statue, this Saturday at eleven._

_Katniss_

Katniss. He rolls the name in his mouth. He’s never heard anything like it before.

 

He’s finishing off his responses and telling her, yes, he’d love to meet Artie this weekend, when Charlie comes barrelling into the back seat with the cacophony of noise only a six-year-old is capable of.

 

“Hey, Dad!”

 

“Hey, bud. How was school?”

 

“Good! Ms. Rue brought in cupcakes ‘cause it was her birthday.”

 

“Cupcakes, huh?” Peeta pulls out of the parking lot and turns out onto the main street. “Were they better than mine?”

 

In the mirror, Charlie fixes him with a look of uncharacteristic seriousness. “No one’s cupcakes are better than yours.”

 

“Glad to hear it.” They coast past the bakery and out of town, where houses are lined up neatly like rows of trees in an orchard. “Hey, bud, wanna come to the park with me this weekend?”

 

Charlie’s too invested in his dinosaur figurines — which Peeta remembers telling him he couldn’t bring to school — to give him more than a passive, “Hmm.”

 

Peeta smiles to himself as he turns onto their street. “We’re going to meet someone.”

 

The dinosaurs crash together in epic battle. “Uh-huh.”

 

“And maybe, if all goes well, we’re going to bring her home.”

 

“Her?” Charlie drops his dinosaurs and fixes Peeta with a wary look. “Who’s her?”

 

Peeta pulls into their driveway and spins in his seat, grinning as he flashes the picture of Artie from her adoption listing. “Her name’s Artemis.”

 

“A dog?" Charlie’s eyes blow wide. “We’re gonna get a dog!”

 

“Maybe,” Peeta says as he climbs out of the car. “We have to meet her first.”

 

“What sort of dog is she?”

 

“She’s a beagle.”

 

“What’s she like?”

 

“I don’t know, bud. We’ll meet her on Saturday and find out.”

 

“Do you think she’ll like me?”

 

“I don’t see why not.”

 

“What does she like? What’s her favourite food? What are her favourite games? What are…”

 

Peeta sighs and takes Charlie’s backpack from the back seat. Maybe he should’ve waited until Charlie was half-asleep again before he said anything…

 

**XXX**

 

Come midday, the sun is high and bright in the sky. Peeta curses to himself; why didn’t he bring sunscreen? He can almost hear his skin sizzling.

 

Katniss is late. By almost an hour. He and Charlie have made lap after lap around the park, the stern, cold eyes of the Snow statue following them all the while.

 

“We’ll give it another ten minutes,” Peeta says as Charlie takes huge gulps of water from an overpriced bottle. “If they’re not here, then we’ll go.”

 

Charlie almost chokes on his water. “But, Dad!”

 

“I know. But they’re running late.” He glances down at his phone, shadows it with his free hand from the glare, but there’s no new messages or anything. “Maybe they’ve changed their minds.”

 

Right as the words leave his mouth, he knows he’s wrong.

 

Tentatively approaching them is a beautiful woman, maybe his own age, with jet black hair that glows like embers in the high sunlight and warm olive skin, holding a massive bag in one hand and a leash in the other. His heart kicks up into overdrive; he’s never felt such an instantaneous, overwhelming reaction to a woman, not even Charlie’s mother. Even without the small dog with a pink collar loping along at her side, straining on her leash to sniff everything in the air, he knows this is Katniss. Somehow, no other name seems to fit.

 

Trotting beside her is her tiny, adorable miniature, a little girl of maybe three or four clutching the woman’s hand, with cheeks so red he thinks she must have been crying.

 

His heart feels like it’s hopped up into his throat as she comes closer, closer, and pauses in front of him. His mouth opens and closes, and he can just about feel his brain try to make speech happen, but it’s just not working. She’s not just beautiful: she’s _radiant_.

 

She tips her sunglasses down her nose and inspects him with silvery eyes that are red around the edges.

 

“Are you Peeta?” she asks, her voice coming out low and sultry, like smoke and fire.

 

“Yeah.” His voice breaks. He clears his throat. “Yeah,” he tries again. “You’re Katniss?”

 

She gives a terse nod.

 

“Sorry we’re late. We had a few things to do before we came, and they all ran late.”

 

“Aww, cool!” Charlie leaps in front of him before Peeta can say anything more. He’s on his knees before Artie, patting her fur and scratching behind her floppy ears. “She’s so cool! Are we keeping her, Dad?”

 

Peeta sends an apologetic smile Katniss’ way; her lips stay in the same tense, unmoving line.

 

“Don’t know, Charlie. That’s up to Katniss here.”

 

The line of her lips softens just a fraction, the corner quirking up into the tiniest of smiles.

 

“She’s adorable, by the way.” Peeta grins and squats down to pat Artie. “Why are you selling her, if you don’t mind my asking?”

 

“We had to move,” she says, with a sharp edge to her tone. “We can’t keep her in our new house. The new landlord’s kind of militant about pets, we’ve heard.”

 

“That’s too bad.” He holds out his hand for Artie to sniff, but she doesn’t seem too interested in him. “What does your… husband think?”

 

She quirks a brow at him. “No husband,” she says. “And even if there was, I doubt it would change things.” She coughs. “So, is your wife excited?”

 

He grins up at her. “No wife. Or husband for that matter. Just me and Charlie, looking for a new friend.”

 

She huffs a tiny laugh and quickly coughs to disguise it. Peeta’s grin spreads even wider.

 

“Anyway, I took her to the vet yesterday,” Katniss says, her grip on the leash tightening as Artie tugs away. “She’s all healthy, and she had a bath and got her claws trimmed.” She taps the faded cloth handbag hanging at her side. “All we need is for you to sign the transfer papers.”

 

Peeta’s gaze shoots back up to her face. “Excuse me?”

 

“I think…” She trails off, sucks in a huge gulp of air. “I just want what’s best for Artie, and I think that’s you.”

 

“What, really?”

 

“Yeah. You gave good answers to all my questions. And you look…” She shifts about and gives him a sidelong glance up and down out the corner of her eye. “I don’t know… active.”

 

He grins at the flush that takes over her cheeks.

 

“That,” she quickly goes on, waving at Charlie and Artie playing on the grass, “and your son seems to really like her. I think they’ll be good friends.”

 

At that, the little girl at her side turns bright red and ducks her head against Katniss’ leg. Her little shoulders start to shake. Peeta can just hear her muffled voice: “No, mama. No Artie.”

 

Katniss sighs. “Violet, please. It’s all right. Artie will be happy with them.”

 

Violet shakes her head, presses even closer to her mother’s thigh. Katniss sighs again and brushes her hand through her daughter’s hair.

 

“She’s not taking it so well,” Katniss explains in a low whisper.

 

Peeta nods, reaches out a hand to set against Violet’s tiny shoulder. The little girl shakes her head and presses even tighter again.

 

He sighs and stands as Katniss leads him over to a park bench. The only words that pass between them are Katniss pointing out where on the forms he needs to sign. Three signatures and two-hundred bucks later, he’s a dog owner.

 

Somehow, it all feels so _wrong_. Not even Artie seems so enthused. The only one having a good time in all of this is Charlie.

 

“She’s not very good off a leash,” Katniss says, her voice wavering. “She’ll follow her nose to the ends of the earth. And she runs fast.”

 

“Katniss,” he starts, but she ploughs on.

 

“She’s a bit weird with things that have wheels: skateboards and trolleys and things, so be careful if you’re walking her in busy places.”

 

“Katniss.” He thinks she’s about to burst into tears.

 

“And you can’t give her too many snacks. She’ll eat everything if you let her.”

 

“I’ll remember.” He stares down at his hands folded in his lap. He never expected to feel so… evil.

 

“And, also, please, just…”

 

He can’t help himself; he wraps an arm around her shoulder and pulls her against his side. He half-expects her to scream, shove him away and run off into the dense packing of trees bordering the park. But she doesn’t. Instead, it’s as though all the fight drains from her. She goes slack against him leans into him, presses her face into the crook of his neck for one, two, three seconds, enough for him to catch the soft citrus scent of her hair. He swallows at the warmth of her breath puffing against his skin, fights a shiver clawing its way through him.

 

“Sorry,” she mutters before pulling away with a massive sigh.

 

“Don’t worry about it,” he murmurs. Even with the warmth of the day, when she moves off him, he feels cold.

 

She schools her expression into a scowl and stands, wrapping an arm around Violet and handing over Artie’s leash. She drops the massive bag at his feet and he peers inside; Artie’s bowls, a folded bed, toys and snacks. God, he feels even lower.

 

“Please, just… take good care of her, all right?”

 

Before Peeta can say another word, Katniss is picking up her things and herding her daughter to the nearest exit.

 

“Dad! We’ve got a dog!” Charlie positively beams and he scratches Artie around the ears. Artie’s just watching her family fade towards the parking lot with the sort of forlorn expression naturally on most beagles.

 

“Not so rough, bud,” he says as he watches them leave. “She’s only a little dog.” He sighs and stands, bogged down with bags. “Come on, let’s get her into the car and head home, so she can check out her new yard.”

 

Artie follows with little fuss to her new car. She hops into the back seat and Charlie tumbles in after her, his huge grin not wavering once. Peeta feels his guilt lift at the sight of his son so happy.

 

He settles himself in the driver’s seat and drops his keys at the sound of his name, muffled through the window.

 

“Peeta! Wait!”

 

Katniss is sprinting towards him, on her own this time. He smiles as she approaches, winds down the car window for her to lean in. “Is something wrong?” he asks.

 

She stares into the back of his car. For a second, he thinks she’s going to reach over, take Artie back, and run full-tilt the other way. Instead, she sags against the door and looks at him imploringly.

 

“Look, I know you don’t owe me anything, but do you think…” She sighs, glances over to where her car must be parked. “Do you think you could send some pictures when Artie’s all settled? Just so Violet knows she’s doing all right?”

 

He nods, a little too enthusiastically. “Yeah, of course. And, uh…” He trails off, runs a hand through his sweaty hair. “If you wanted, you could bring Violet over sometime, to visit? I don’t live too far from here. Or we could come to you, or come to this park —”

 

“I’d like that,” she cuts in, though her eyes still look unsure. “I mean, Violet would love that.”

 

“Great.” He grins as Katniss backs away. “Send me a text.”

 

“I will. Soon.” She brushes a long length of black fringe away from her eyes. “Thank you, Peeta. And Charlie. I know you’ll take good care of her.”

 

“We will!” Charlie squeals from the back.

 

She pushes back off the car, a shy, tiny smile on her lips. “I guess I’ll hear from you soon?”

 

“Yeah.” He nods. “You’ll definitely hear from me soon.”


	6. Free For All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @everybirdfellsilent.
> 
> Much of this (including the courses and the products) is inspired by my own university and its open days.

Weaving through, around, and otherwise in between a sea of prospective college students at Panem U’s open day isn’t the way Katniss envisioned spending her one day off that week.

 

She’s too easy a sell when it comes to Prim. All that girl needs to do is bat her eyelashes and there Katniss goes, without a question. Hell, if she bats her lashes for anyone, they’re gone.

 

But now Prim’s gone, too, leaving Katniss holding the bags.

 

Literally.

 

She’s weighed down on all sides with information bags and packages from almost every faculty Panem U houses, and if she drops one, Prim will kill her. God forbid there be one less coupon for a half-off coffee for Prim to let expire.

 

It’s too hot out to just stand there like a beacon and wait for Prim to come back, wherever she is. Though now that Katniss thinks about it, she’s not even sure when she and Prim got separated. Probably somewhere near the open quad, where university clubs galore were advertising themselves. Prim would have gone for something like that, signed up for one of everything before she even enrolled, regardless of whether she chooses this school or not.

 

Katniss sighs, adjusts the bags on her shoulders, and ducks into the closest tent, bedecked in pink. The humanities department.

 

It’s packed to the brim with artsy types and stinks of sweat and grass and paint from the fine arts booth. Clusters of teenagers and their parents crowd around the tables, each talking above the other to be heard over the constant microphone announcements overhead. Kids roped into spruiking their respective majors for the undecideds wear wide, freakish grins and garish, highlighter-pink t-shirts so bright Katniss has to blink against them.

 

She’s about to leave for her sight and sanity’s sake when her phone rumbles in her pocket. It takes some creative jumbling that the performing arts department would be proud of to wrest it free.

 

_Prim: At the grassed area with all the food vans. Where r u?_

Katniss sighs. The campus is a maze. She’s got no idea where the food vans are. Maybe they passed them on their way in earlier that morning…

 

It takes three attempts to get the right words in the right order, and two near-drops to send the damn message off.

 

**_Humanities tent._ **

_Prim: Katniss! That’s on the other side of the campus._

**_Then you’d better hurry up._ **

****

She shoves her phone back in her pocket and rebalances the bags. With a huff, she ventures deeper into the crowds. She might as well grab one of everything; when Prim finds her, they can leave.

 

She slinks into a narrow gap — with the same utter ruthlessness employed by everyone else — at a table labelled Media, Culture and Creative Arts. She surveys the stacks of leaflets: creative writing, professional writing, journalism, performing arts, fine arts, literary and cultural studies. Not really her wheelhouse — and probably not Prim’s, either, who’s so set on pre-med it’s not cute anymore — but she takes one of each, just in case. She’s taken one of each from every other tent, too.

 

Warm, calloused fingers brush and spark against hers on the way to the fine arts leaflet. She takes a new breath in and finds cinnamon and dill, bread and fire. In the vast, dense crowds, with no one else she knows around, the scent calms her, grounds her.

 

“Sorry,” a low, rumbling voice says.

 

Her cheeks feel like they’re bursting into flames, and she’s got no idea why. “No problem,” she mutters. She grabs another leaflet as the random hand goes for one of the many stacks of complimentary pens and sticky flags. And takes them all.

 

Katniss quirks a brow, casts a sidelong glance at the figure next to her. A few wayward blond curls lay low over his forehead, brushing into eyes as blue as the cloudless sky outside. Broad shoulders and strong arms strain against the navy cotton of his shirt. Something shifts low in her belly, and it’s clear then why her face feels like it’s on fire.

 

“I can just about hear you judging me.”

 

She jumps. “What?”

 

“It’s hardly fair, you know.” The stranger grins, shoves another few pens into his satchel. He reached out again takes two USBs, a handful of erasers, even a little pink piggy bank emblazoned with the School of Humanities logo. “They put these things out for us to take, and it’s not like anyone’s paying attention, or cares, for that matter. You’d be doing the exact same thing if you had the chance.”

 

She can’t hold back a snort. “What chance? You took everything before I could even start, and this is the first table I’ve looked at.”

 

“What? It’s good stuff. Handy, too. And the pens are nice.” He holds one out for her. “Want one?”

 

She squares her shoulders and meets the stranger’s eyes. “I reckon you could part with more than one, don’t you?”

 

He quirks a brow. “I suppose I could let two or three go, maybe chuck in a couple of other things. For a price.”

 

She matches his expression, but it’s hard to mirror his stance with all the weight bearing down on her frame. “You’re holding things I could get for free, from other tables, hostage?”

 

“You’re free to make the rounds, if you want.” He leans in, smirks, and whispers, “Doesn’t really seem your style, though.”

 

She leans in, so they’re almost nose to nose. “What’s your price?”

 

The corner of his lips twitch. “Your name.”

 

Katniss blinks, moves back. “My name?”

 

He straightens, rolls his shoulders. “Fair, right? I’ll even give you my name, if you want.”

 

“You’re starting to part with an awful lot. Names, pens.”

 

“Maybe, but I still think I’m getting the better end of the deal.” He reaches out a hand, grins again, and _oh, dear God._ “I’m Peeta Mellark.”

 

She stares at his hand and reaches out, inch by agonising inch, to take it. She’s almost ready for his skin to spark against hers again, but nothing happens. His hand is warm, large and dry around hers, enveloping it entirely.

 

“Katniss.”

 

His grin shifts down into a slow, gentle smile, no less heart-stopping than before. “It’s nice to meet you, Katniss.” He lets her go far too soon and reaches back into his bag to bring out a handful of pens and other assorted detritus. “For you.”

 

She plucks them from his hands, one by one, and adds them to one of her many bags. “Thank you.”

 

“No problem.” Peeta zips his bag back up and winds his hands behind his back. “So, _Katniss_. Will you be matriculating with the class of 2018?”

 

She shrugs and steps away from the table; there’s a line forming behind her, and not a single person in it seems any sort of patient. Peeta follows without a word, like he thought she expected him to.

 

“Done that already. Biology. I’m here for my sister today.”

 

“Oh, yeah? Me, too.”

 

“Your sister’s here, too?”

 

“Oh, no.” He laughs. “Not that part. I don’t have one of those. I meant I’m part of the alumni outreach program. I talk to kids about my major and try to draw them in.”

 

“Then shouldn’t you be in one of those horrific pink shirts?”

 

“They let me change.” He grins and unzips his bag again. Through the gap, she can see a peek of pink fabric glaring back at her. “It made me look flushed. Everyone was asking if I was feeling all right.”

 

With his pale skin, already a-glow from the heat, she doesn’t doubt it. “What was your major?”

 

“Fine art. Get it? _Draw_ them in?”

 

Against all better judgement, she lets out a laugh. “That was terrible.”

 

He smiles again. “No, it wasn’t. It got you to laugh, didn’t it?”

 

The gentle, earnest glint in his eyes gives her pause. “I suppose it did,” she eventually says.

 

“Listen, Katniss…” He trails off, runs a hand through his hair, slicking back all the tendrils that were hanging in his face. Katniss almost wants to chase his hands back, bring those curls back. “I know this is weird… we just met, and all you know about me so far is that I’ve got a stationery fetish… and I know nothing about you except that you have a sister and that your favourite colour is green —”

 

“Who said my favourite colour is green?”

 

He gestures up and down her body. “Your nail polish. Your shirt. Your shoelaces. Kind of everything.”

 

“Ah.” She can’t really dispute any of that.

 

“But I like you. At least, I think I do. I’d like the chance to find out properly.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a card, thick and snowy-white, his name and number is peachy-orange and raised. Commissions and portraits. Impressive. “You’re here with your sister, and I doubt you’ve got time now, but another day, maybe, would you like to get a coffee or something with me?”

 

She takes the card and runs her fingers over the raised letters. She should say no. In any other case she would, without another thought. But Peeta doesn’t seem like the dude-bro Catos, Marvels and Glosses of the world, too bent on preening themselves to notice anything happening outside their own worlds.

 

“I… uh…”

 

“Just think about it,” he urges her. “If nothing else, it’s a free drink, right?”

 

She pockets the card with a slow, secret smile curling her lips. “Right.”

 

“Katniss!”

 

Katniss turns towards her name, finds Prim lumbering towards her with her own share of the bags.

 

“That’s my sister,” she says on a sigh.

 

Peeta scratches at the back of his neck. “Oh. I’ll… uh, I should let you get back to it, then.”

 

Katniss nods, but she’s not sure she’s ready to stop talking to him yet. “All right.”

 

“It was, uh, really nice meeting you, Katniss.”

 

She smiles, a real, warm one. “You, too, Peeta.”

 

With a last smile to match, one that makes her heart skip a beat, he melts back into the throng of people. She watches the golden halo of his hair above the crowd until he disappears.

 

“Who was that?” Prim asks as soon as she’s close enough. No hello or anything.

 

“Fine arts guy,” Katniss says with a shrug. She’s not the sort to give so much away so early on. “Former student trying to rope me in. You ready to go yet, little duck?”

 

“Ugh, yes. I feel like I’ve walked a thousand miles. And why’s it so hot in here anyway?”

 

Katniss looks back over the crowd, finds Peeta back at his post by the fine arts table, brush poised at a huge mural of a lush, forest scene. He bends over to etch a detail somewhere near the bottom, and the fabric of his jeans pulls tight over his perfect ass.

 

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”


	7. Stacked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @onedirectionshallneverchange

Katniss sighs and drums her fingernails against the shiny, laminated surface of the loans desk.

 

She doesn’t know how Madge does it. It’s barely gone nine in the morning and already half the fifty-strong cohort of children are crying for their mothers while the other half are screaming and throwing glitter at each other. No wonder no one’s coming by to check out books from her. Everyone’s keeping a wide berth of the entire building. Except for the influx of children, it’s a veritable ghost town.

 

Why do some people even bother becoming a parent? What’s the point if the first thing you do on your kid’s first day of school holidays is turf them to the nearest library with a playtime program and leave them there all day?

 

“Come on, kids,” Madge calls out, but her voice is strained. It might be time to throw in the towel on life in general when even the freakishly-maternal and ever-patient child’s librarian can’t hack it after only half an hour.

 

Katniss smirks to herself and takes another sip of her tea. She glances over the holiday itinerary the effusive head librarian plucked from beneath her beehive wig for the kids for the next two weeks and immediately wants to break something: from eight-thirty to ten, arts and crafts. From ten-fifteen to eleven, story time. Then lunch. There’s a nap for them in there somewhere, then right back to arts and crafts and another story time in the afternoon. Day after day for _two whole weeks_. Does this qualify as cruel and unusual punishment? Because devilish little hell-spawns these kids may be — who seem to have made it their collective life’s work to cover Madge in so much glitter that she’ll be washing it out of her hair and finding it in her clothes for the next decade — surely they don’t deserve _this_.

 

A fat stack of picture books land in front of her with a loud thump. Katniss jumps and almost spills her tea; she had no idea anyone else was even in here. She can’t even see them behind the stack; they might as well still not be there at all.

 

“Good morning. Welcome to District Twelve County Library,” she starts once her pulse goes back to normal. “Do you have your library card with you today?”

 

“Uh, no,” a low, masculine voice says.

 

Katniss bites back a sigh and reaches into a nook below the desk. She tugs out a sheet of paper and slides it across the bench. “If you’d just fill out this application form, we can get one started for you.”

 

The guy chuckles. “Actually, I’m not trying to check them out.”

 

She lets the sigh loose this time, and adjusts her seat to better see this person insistent on speaking in ridiculous riddles —

 

And falls right out of it.

 

She lands on the floor with a surprised yelp. She’s never done that before. The guy bolts into action.

 

He leans over the desk, but all she can see of him is a mop of ashy-blond hair. “Miss? Are you all right?”

 

She’s fine, but it’s going to take a week or so for her dignity to recover. She groans and tries to reach out for her chair to haul herself up, but only succeeds in pushing it even further out of her reach.

 

Her cheeks are on fire now as the stranger all but sprints around to her side of the desk and squats down beside her. “Miss, are you all right?” he asks again.

 

She’s struck by a sweet-smelling cloud: sugar and cinnamon, with something a little deeper. Herbal, almost.

 

“Fine,” she grumbles at the ground, but she lets him help her back to her feet. His hands are warm on her arms, his grip firm but yielding. That nervous pounding of her heart is back. She doesn’t dare look up at him, but takes stock of each new feature as she passes it on her way up. Neat, navy-blue slacks give way to a shirt in her favourite shade of forest green. On his lapel, there’s a bright orange name-tag: _Peeta Mellark, Victor Volunteers._ Toned arms fill out the sleeves, but not ridiculously so, giving way to large hands with long, slender fingers. But when she reaches his face, it’s like she’s been struck by lightning.

 

With his bright blue eyes, cherub-blond hair and ridiculous little dimple in his left cheek, he’s not ruggedly good-looking like her ex, Gale. He’s not male-model beautiful like Finnick, her co-worker Annie’s husband. But there’s _something_ about him that has them all beat, and he’s smiling at her like she’s the moon, the sun and the stars all rolled into one.

 

He’s not trying to check anything out, but she sure as hell is.

 

“Are you okay?” he asks.

 

“You’re a volunteer,” she says. _Nailed it._

He laughs, deep and rich like melted chocolate. “You got me. I’m Peeta. I’m here for story time.”

 

His words are punctuated by a scream, a glass shattering, and Madge’s indignant shriek.

 

Katniss winces and settles herself back in her seat. “You poor soul.”

 

He laughs again. “I’ve had worse, believe me.” He taps the pile of books between them. “Anyway, these are the books I’ll be using for story time. Do you need to make a record of them, or…” He trails off, his smile growing wider and wider as he looks at her. She schools her own expression to her usual scowl, but his grin doesn’t budge.

 

“No,” she says. “So long as you put them back once you’re done, it should be fine.”

 

“Great.” He smiles again. He hefts the pile of books into his arms and turns to leave. He’s two steps away from the desk when he turns back.

 

“Sorry, I didn’t get your name?”

 

She swallows. “It’s Katniss.”

 

He nods. “Katniss,” he says experimentally. “Well, I guess I’ll be seeing you around?”

 

“I’m here every day.”

 

“Great!” He clears his throat. “Yeah, uh… great.” He points a thumb over his shoulder to the cardboard cut-out enchanted forest backdrop he’ll use for story time and almost loses his books, but saves them with far more grace than she might have managed. “I better go set up?”

 

She gives him a small smile as he backs away towards the backdrop, half obscured from her view by rows of shelves. She catches Madge’s eye for a split second and finds the other woman shooting her a massive grin and wiggly eyebrows. Katniss flips her the bird with no care as to the children present and goes back to her tea.

Now she just needs to figure out how to sit in with a group of six-year-olds for story time without it being weird…


	8. Drawing Conclusions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @imsoeverlarked
> 
> This is another one I'd like to continue. Again, while it's going here, it might be removed and put in its own story later.

Peeta tucks his satchel under his arm and kneels on the thin, faded carpet so he’s eye-level with his tiny son. The toddler stares at him with wide blue eyes, so much like his own, and sucks his fist into his gummy mouth.

 

It hadn’t been Peeta’s idea to bring Rye with him today, but living in a city across the country from the rest of his family and friends doesn’t leave him with many choices. Rye’s mother skipped out on them without a word to Parts Unknown not long after Rye’s first birthday, so she’s not an option, and Peeta’s always kind of balked at the idea of day care, so here they are.

 

Not that he minds. Peeta might be biased, but Rye’s the best kid he’s ever known.

 

“Promise to be good during my meeting, Rye?” Peeta asks.

 

Rye nods. “Yes, Daddy.”

 

“Promise to be quiet?”

 

He nods again. “Yes, Daddy.”

 

“And do we remember what happens to little boys that don’t keep their promises?”

 

“They don’t get no ice cream after,” Rye says gravely.

 

“Good boy.” Peeta picks Rye up and manoeuvres them both into a waiting chair. He bounces Rye up and down with his jittery knee, thankful for the excuse.

 

Of course, there’s no real need for him to be nervous. He’s got the job already — his first real big break in illustration. But it’s not every day you get to meet with _Katniss Everdeen_ — or, as she’s known to rapturous acclaim in the picture book world, Effie Trinket — to discuss his concept art for her next book.

 

The designer’s office is covered in artwork from hundreds of previous picture book publications, but there’s not one available to read to his son while he waits. Instead, tattered back copies of _Bookmarks_ from over a decade ago litter the tables. Peeta entertains himself by tunelessly humming some song that played on the radio on his way over while Rye tugs at the buttons on his coat.

 

“’s boring here, Daddy.”

 

Peeta lets out a soft sigh. “I know, but there’s not much I can do about it right now, bud.”

 

“Can we go?”

 

Peeta snickers. “I wish, bud, but there’s still important stuff to do yet.”

 

“More ‘portant than ice cream?”

 

“Unfortunately, yes.” Peeta pokes his son’s tiny nose. “But not by much; this is only a little bit more important than ice cream.”

 

Rye yawns. “But I want ice cream now!”

 

“Sounds more like you want a nap now. Hang in there, Rye. Mr. A just wants to look at the drawings and see if they’re okay.”

 

“For the mockingjay book?”

 

“Yeah, for the mockingjay book.”

 

He checks his watch again. Almost half-past one. His leg jumps even faster. Rye lets out a squeaky giggle, so Peeta grins and jumps faster still; at least Rye can enjoy his soul-crushing nervousness.

 

The door flies open, the bell above it rattling like it’s caught in a storm. Peeta’s gaze shoots up, and it’s like all the breath in his lungs has been sucked out. A small, striking — _stunning_ — woman with a long, straight black braid shooting like an arrow down her back stumbles into the small waiting room like a hurricane. Peeta watches, frozen in awe, as she battles with a jacket falling down her arms, four bags dangling from her person like ornaments on a Christmas tree, a stack of manila folders in one hand, and a large, steaming cup of coffee in the other.

 

She mutters to herself; he doesn’t think she’s even noticed him yet, too busy with her careful juggling. One of her folders slips from her grip, and then it’s like a scene from a disaster movie; Peeta watches her lunge for the falling folder, only to lose her coffee along the way. It falls to the ground as though it’s in slow-motion. The dark coffee seeps out and puddles all over the floor.

 

“Shit,” the woman hisses as she falls to her knees — a long run like a zipper appearing in her tights as she does — and retrieves her papers. She picks up some that are soaked with coffee, the fresh ink running and illegible; useless. “Shit, _shit_ , _shit_!”

 

Peeta clears his throat, the sound more amused than anything else. There’s no real reason to be annoyed; she’s whispering, and Rye’s too busy giggling at her circus act to hear what she’s saying anyway.

 

“Uh-oh!” Rye cries out.

 

The woman’s head shoots up and she jumps, like she never knew he was there. She stares with something indefinable glinting in her startling, bullet-grey eyes. Her gaze lands on Rye, tucked in Peeta’s arms, and her eyes widen. Peeta quirks a brow, and the woman slaps a hand over her mouth.

 

“Oh, God,” she says, but it’s muffled behind her hand. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t even see you there.”

 

Peeta grins. “No harm done.”

 

“I’m sorry,” she says again. She falls into a seat across from him and sighs. “It’s just been a shi —” She cuts herself off as her gaze drifts back down to his son in his lap. “I mean… a really bad morning.”

 

Rye wriggles his way out of Peeta’s arms and darts over to the woman’s side, slapping at her knees.

 

“Hello,” she says with a smile more like a grimace tugging at her lips.

 

“Rye,” Peeta calls out. “Come back here, please.”

 

“She’s pretty, Daddy,” Rye says as he toddles back.

 

“Uh, yeah, she is. She’s very pretty.” His cheeks feel like they’re on fire. When he chances a glance at the woman again, her head is bent over one of her folders, a tiny smile on her lips. “But she’s waiting, too, just like us.”

 

“Is she scared, too, Daddy?”

 

The fire in his cheeks fans out into an inferno. The woman’s shoulders are shaking with laughter.

 

“I think everyone’s a little bit nervous with these sorts of meetings, Rye.”

 

“I am, a little bit,” she says, smirking. “Just for the record.”

 

Peeta shakes his head. “Don’t mind him. He’s a curious little guy. Always asking questions.”

 

“If he doesn’t do that, how is he going to get answers?” She smiles and nods down towards Rye. “Is he your son?”

 

Peeta beams and pulls Rye back onto his lap. “That he is.”

 

“He’s very sweet.” The woman shoots him a wry smile. “Haymitch isn’t going to like him being here, you know.”

 

It’s true. The cranky head designer (how such a lush ever scored a position with a children’s book publisher is beyond Peeta’s comprehension) has little patience for anything, let alone small children. Still, Peeta scoffs. “Haymitch can deal with it. Do you have a meeting with him, too?”

 

“Yeah, he’s my one-thirty.”

 

Peeta pauses. “But, wait a second — Haymitch is my one-thirty.”

 

Her eyes narrow, scrutinising every visible inch of him. “Who are you?”

 

He extends his hand across the small room. “Peeta Mellark.”  


Her eyes widen in understanding as she leans forwards and takes his hand. She shakes it with a grip firmer, yet still softer than he was expecting. “You’re the illustrator,” she says with a nod. “I’m Katniss Everdeen.”

 

His jaw drops. There’s never any author pictures inside her books; he always assumed _Effie Trinket_ was a dowdy old woman with a bad perm and a wardrobe full of matched-up, shapeless pantsuits. Not this gorgeous, scowling bombshell maybe only a year or two younger or older than his own twenty-seven years.

 

“You’re Effie Trinket? I mean, Katniss Everdeen?”

 

“One and the same.” She shrugs, but her eyes sparkle like silver tinsel. “Not what you were expecting?”

 

“Uh, no. Not exactly.”

 

She smiles, and he swears it can’t be a cliché to say it lights up the room, not when it’s so true. “I never am. So, you’re my one-thirty?”

 

Peeta nods. “And you’re mine, too, I guess.”

 

“And you’re both early,” a gruff voice says from the door. They both turn towards the sound and find Haymitch Abernathy on the threshold, mid-yawn and scratching his paunch, a large marinara sauce stain on his shirt.

 

“Actually, we’re right on time,” Katniss says.

 

“You’ve got grubs!” Rye cries out, pointing a chubby finger out at Haymitch’s shirt. Katniss lets out a soft, amused chuckle, and Peeta bites back a snort.

 

Haymitch stares at Rye for a long moment, then grunts. “This one yours, boy?”

 

Peeta nods.

 

“He gonna be quiet?”

 

“Or else he won’t get any ice cream.”

 

Haymitch grunts again. “Whatever. You two wanna get this show on the road, or what?”

 

He staggers past them into the main office and slams the door after him. Peeta adjusts his satchel on his shoulder and Rye in his arms. Katniss manages her bags and folders far better this time.

 

Peeta saunters towards the door, kicks it open, and holds it there with the tow of his boot. “After you,” he says.

 

Katniss rolls her eyes, but smiles as she breezes past. “Thank you, Peeta.”

 

Peeta grins back, suddenly full of confidence. “You’re welcome, Katniss.”

 

He presses a quick kiss to Rye’s curls and follows her in as the door shuts behind them.


	9. It Started Out With A Kiss; How Did It End Up Like This?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @finnickfoxes. Yet another story I think needs expanding...
> 
> Chapter title an incredibly dumb, spur-of-the-moment, possibly ill-advised ripping off of a line in 'Mr. Brightside' by The Killers

In between another sharp nip of his teeth and a vengeful swirl of his tongue, Peeta Mellark, pain-in-her-ass jerk wad for the better part of her senior year of high school, then her entire college existence, whispers against her lips, “You plan on explaining yourself anytime soon, sweetheart?”

She bites his lip, hard enough to make him groan into her mouth. She swallows the sound and kisses him again. They’re forceful things, rough and punishing. But they’re addictive, too, and full of so much intensity and indefinable _feeling_. Nothing at all like a kiss should be. At least, not one you’d have with a guy you hate, let alone in public.

“Not yet.”

She should, though. She owes him _big_. What’s the going rate for accosting a guy, with whom you’ve had a mutual hate-fest going on with for the past three years, in the middle of a busy guild coffee shop and kissing him with no explanation?

(In her defence, she’d like to point out that she had no idea it’d be Peeta she’d be turning around and landing lip-first on. She just thought it’d be another blond-haired, broad-shouldered… literally anyone else she could have explained the situation to and bought a coffee for to apologise).

But his kiss is nothing like she expected. Nor is his reaction. He should have shoved her away — she would have, if the roles were reversed — not drawn her in even closer with one hand cradled around her head and the other wrapped around her waist like they’re… like they’re an actual couple or something. He tastes… sweet. And spicy. Like cinnamon sugar. Funny. She figured someone with their head so far up their own ass would taste like —

He slows the kiss to something that threatens to melt her. She shouldn’t be enjoying this anywhere near as much as she is. She tries to drive the kiss back to the hateful roughness of before, to match the tone of all their interactions so far, but he doesn’t let her. His lips are soft and strong, wresting control away from her. They’re in dangerous territory, but there’s not much she can do about it. Hell, there’s not much she _wants_ to do about it…

He pulls away at last with a soft, damp smack and smirks down at her; the expression he wears is unreadable. Par for the course for the two of them since high school ended. She doesn’t think she’ll ever understand the smarmy bastard and just what it is he does to her.

Still, she stares as he licks at his red, swollen lips and fights the shiver that threatens to take her over. She needs her head checked, that’s for sure.

“Well, princess,” he drawls, but he doesn’t move away; his warm breath fans over her face with each exhale, and he draws small circles against her hip with his thumb. It’s lulling, and almost enough to make her forget about… “Is he gone?”

She darts her gaze to her right where, just beyond the window, Gale Hawthorne — the second-biggest pain in her ass for the better part of her entire college existence — stood just a moment ago, tapping on the glass to get her attention. Or was it even longer ago? Seconds and minutes seemed to bleed and meld with Peeta’s lips on hers, though it couldn’t have been more than five, ten, fifteen seconds, surely…

She jolts back and shoves Peeta away from her with more force than necessary, and gains a little more satisfaction than she should when he stumbles into a (mercifully) empty table and lands ass up. The café goes silent, and he stares up at her like she’s the insane one.

Maybe she is. The kiss addled her brain something fierce.

“Yeah, he’s gone,” she says with a shrug, though it’s hard to act casual when you can’t get your breathing back under control. “We’re done now.”

He quirks a brow at her from his spot on the floor. People are gawking, but they all seem enraptured by what might happen next. She doesn’t blame them; it’s like a scene out of a bad soap opera. Even she kind of wants to know what happens next.

“We’d have had to start for us to be done, sweetheart.”

She almost freezes. They came so close to _starting_ , all those years ago. It scared her how much she wanted them to _start_. “Don’t care, Mellark.” She waves him off and turns to leave. The sooner she can leave his stifling, baffling presence, the better.

“Don’t I at least get a thank you?” he calls after her. “Anyone else would have bought me dinner before they start batting around my tonsils. Or at least paid for my tea for me.”

She flips her middle finger over her shoulder and steps out into the sunlight, far, far away from Peeta Mellark and his confusing lips. “Screw you, Mellark.”

**XXX**

She’s beginning to wonder if there’s such a thing as _far, far away from Peeta Mellark’s lips_.

The memory of the kiss follows her for the rest of the day. To her classes and to the dining hall, and consuming every step in between. It’s not fair for a fake kiss with a guy she hates to be the best kiss she’s ever had.

She wants to be angry, that it could affect her so much, but Peeta Mellark isn’t really to blame, is he? She’s the one that initiated it, that allowed it to happen. Just that thought pisses her off more than she ever believed possible.

It even follows her to the library later that evening, where she’s pretty sure it’s illegal to have any sort of even remotely smutty thought. Her lips still tingle with a vivid sort of after-memory, still feel swollen and chapped. She’s sure everyone she walks past can see it on her face, can feel the conflict rolling off her in waves.

But the library is deserted, so quiet that Katniss can hear her footsteps padding over the carpet. She passes a few people on her way to the elevator, and thankfully shares it with no one as she mounts it to the fifth floor, where Gale said he’d be waiting.

Her respite from Gale was never going to last long, not when they’d been partnered up for an ecology paper at the beginning of the semester. It’d been all right at first; they’d compared their similar upbringings, shared similar tastes in music and pop culture. They both hunted to keep their families afloat, lived a mere town over from each other back at their respective homes, and were forced to grow up too fast when their fathers died (in the same mine explosion, they’d later learned). But where Katniss could laugh off the suggestions from their classmates that, with their matching black hair, grey eyes, and dusky olive colouring, she and Gale could almost be siblings, Gale would glare them down and scoff, like he’d been offended in some way.

Something in him shifted after that. From then on, he’d touch her more — never anything inappropriate, just light, fleeting things she thought were accidents until they were happening all the time. Next came the innocuous invitations to parties, movies and cafés he thought she’d like, and not-so-subtle hints about a cabin by a lake he knew about in the woods. All the while she’d smile tightly and decline. But he never quite seemed to get the message…

She finds him at a table in the farthest corner of the floor. He’s hunched over his computer, his back facing her. Katniss takes a deep, bracing breath and pads closer.

He doesn’t even look up, or turn around at her approach. “Hey, Catnip.”

She grits her teeth. One day, she’s going to snap and strangle him for calling her that. Soon, too, she thinks. “Hey, Gale.”

He looks up from his computer like she’s inconveniencing him somehow, and fixes her with a blank look. “So, how you wanna do this?”

Katniss slips her bag from her shoulder and takes the seat opposite Gale. “Well,” she says as unzips her bag. “We should probably get the rainfall data down, so we can start on the actual report.”

He nods and shrugs, like it has no real bearing on his grades or anything, like the report’s not worth sixty-percent of their final grade. “Whatever.”

Katniss rolls her eyes, but says nothing. He’s an ass, but it’s a welcome change from him ploughing her for details on her personal life. She takes out her notebook and a pen, and carefully writes down the stats Gale recites for her, all while the memory of the kiss plays on repeat in her mind. She’s not sure she could banish it if she tried now.

They’ve been working together for close to an hour, drafting out their report and dividing up the tasks, when Gale clears his throat and says the words she’s been waiting for.

He doesn’t even look up from his laptop. “Saw you in the coffee shop earlier today, Catnip.”

“Really?” she says, hoping her complete and utter disinterest shines through. “I didn’t see you.”

Gale snorts. “Bet you didn’t, what with your tongue down that random Blondie’s throat.”

Katniss blushes, but a hot lick of anger is building inside her, too. Who the fuck does Gale think he is, and where the hell does he get off judging her?

“Uh… yeah. It’s not random, but it’s still kinda… new, so…” She doubts she sounds all that convincing, but Gale’s derisive slip of laughter tells her she managed it all right.

“Yeah, I bet. Madge didn’t even know about him.”

Her hand jolts hard enough to send the nib of her pen clean through the paper. She’s going to have a chat with Madge when she gets back to their shared dorm tonight. “You’re asking my friends about me now?”

Gale shrugs. “You weren’t going to tell me anything.” The fact that Madge has a giant, exploitable crush on him goes unsaid.

“And that wasn’t hint enough?” She slams her notebook shut and shoves it into her shitty bag. Gale glances up from his laptop for once and watches her pack her things away with a look of annoyance. She doesn’t think she could keep working, let alone glance in Gale’s direction again tonight.

“I’m not interested in you, Gale. I never was and I never will be. So how about you grow up and leave me the hell alone, all right?”

She storms away from him, ignoring his yells of her name. She’ll finish her part of the assessment on her own and email it to Gale in the morning. Colossal twat though he is, she admits that he’s much better at the design side of things than she is. Besides, Madge owes her a explanation, and it better not have anything to do with Gale’s arms…

**XXX**

All’s well that ends well, Katniss supposes as she wanders the campus, looking for lunch. After a chiding better suited to a small child than a good friend, Madge is off her back and more contrite than ever; Gale is cordial, if a little cold, but now that both their intentions are out in the open, they’re working together fine. And she hasn’t seen Mellark since _that_ fateful morning. Hell, she’s barely thought of their kiss in days.

She skips the guild coffee shop. Something tells her she wouldn’t be welcome there after last time anyway. Instead, she ventures further across the campus, to a tiny restaurant run by the adjoining culinary school.

It’s not quite midday yet, so the restaurant is quiet and peaceful. Only half a dozen other students take up tables, eyes locked on their laptop screens while plates of pasta steam at their elbows.

She places her order at the counter — a big, cheesy bowl of spaghetti sounds more than perfect — and shuffles along the parade of two-person tables, until a sickeningly familiar voice stops her in her tracks.

“Katniss Everdeen.” She closes her eyes and bites back a groan.

When she looks up again, Peeta Mellark leans back in his seat and crosses his arms over his chest. “Back for more?”

She scowls. “Don’t be a pig, Mellark.”

He grins. “Not that I’d mind being ambushed for random kisses from you again.”

“Fuck this,” she mutters to herself, and starts to walk away.

“Katniss,” he calls after her, and something about the soft command in his tone stops her in her tracks. She turns back and watches him kick out the chair opposite him. “Sit down. We need to talk, all right?”

“If this is about the kiss and… shoving you, then I’m sorry, all right? Otherwise, I don’t have a damn thing to say to you.”

“Fantastic. You can sit and listen to what I have to say, then.” He nudges the chair out some more, until it bumps up against her shins. “Sit down, Katniss. Please.”

She does, but she’s not happy about it. She drags the chair back across the floor as she pulls herself in, the scraping both deafening and obnoxious.

He sighs. “Thank you. Look, Katniss. I’m not sure what I ever did to make you hate me so much —”

“— You know perfectly well what you did, you sorry son of a bitch.”

He slaps a hand down on the table, firm enough to rattle the cutlery. When she levels her gaze with his, his eyes are the same angry blue as a hot flame. “That’s the thing, actually: I don’t. I’ve got no idea what I did to piss you off. All I know, is that we were friends — as much as anyone could be your friend, anyway — and then one day, we just… weren’t anymore.” He shrugs, helpless. “You started acting like… God, I don’t know what, like I’d killed your puppy or something, and you never once told me _why_.”

“You ditched me for Glimmer fucking Carmichael,” she hisses. Even now, five years after the fact, the memory still threatens to suffocate her in humiliation. She’d only left the shitty hotel ballroom for a moment before Peeta was sticking his tongue down Glimmer’s throat.

At his slack jaw, she lets out a derisive snort. “You remember that? You made this huge fuss about that night, going on and on that we could just go as friends, and then you just —” She stops, unwilling to go further. The fact that she was then, and still is now, so incredibly hurt by what happened, makes her want to lock herself in a dank, dark cave forever and never come out. God she was such an idiot back then, wanting all of it, all of _him_ , so much.

“I don’t know what I even expected out of that night,” she mutters to herself. “Of course, if given the option, you’d choose her over me.”

He’s silent for a long time, but when he speaks, his voice is soft, regretful. “Kat, no. I didn’t…”

She bites back a gasp at the nickname only he ever used. Mostly because he was the only one who ever bothered to give her one.

“Look, it doesn’t matter now —”

“Yes, it does,” he cuts in. “It matters a lot.” He runs a hand through his curls and lets out a noise like a growl. “I didn’t want Glimmer that night, Kat, or ever. I didn’t even know you saw her with me. She just…” He sighs. “I didn’t want to be rude. You went and did whatever you did, and she just started dancing with me, and before I knew it…”

“You didn’t look like you minded,” she mutters. The image of them pressed together with no ending or beginning is burned into her mind with no hope of removal.

“Katniss, I wanted to be there with _you_ that night,” he says, and with the surety in his voice, there’s no way she can’t believe him. “I asked you there as friends because that was the only way I could get you to go there with me at all. By the time I got Glimmer off me, I couldn’t find you anywhere. I called, I checked your house… I looked everywhere I could think of for you but… nothing.”

She shakes her head. “That’s the general idea when you’re trying to avoid someone.”

He reaches across the table and covers her hand with his. She wants to pull her hand away, but can’t; with his warmth covering hers, she feels frozen to the spot.

“Please don’t shut me out, Kat,” he pleas. “Not when… god, this whole thing was just a stupid misunderstanding. I lost my best friend because of a stupid misunderstanding.”

Katniss’ heart feels like it’s about to beat out of her chest. He’s not… he couldn’t possibly… “What are you saying?”

He squeezes her hand. “I’m saying, I never wanted Glimmer touching me. There’s only one girl I’ve ever wanted touching me, and if she stayed long enough to watch me push Glimmer off me, she might have understood that sooner.” He leans forward, close enough to kiss her again, but he doesn’t, and she’s not sure how she feels about that. “It’s always been you, Katniss. Always.”

She swallows, but it feels like there’s a lump of cotton lodged in her throat. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

He quirks a brow at her. “Would you have listened?”

“So, you decided you’d be a huge ass jerk right back?”

He smiles at her, and though it’s cliché as all hell, she swears her heart skips a beat. “Pot, kettle? Besides, Kat, that was literally, _literally_ , the only way I could get you to speak to me after everything. I tried being nice. All you did was bite my head off.”

“Well, I’m listening now.”

“Yeah,” he says softly. His thumb is tracing circles over the back of her hand, kicking up a trail of goose bumps. “I guess you are.”

“Sorry for being… you know, a massive cow.”

His smile spreads even wider. “Thank you. And, uh… ditto.”

They’re quiet for a moment again, but it’s not an uncomfortable silence. Rather, it’s a charged, electric thing she can just about feel, so laced with hope and anticipation that she could almost choke on it.

“Kat, can we try again?” he suddenly says. “I just… I want what we were so close to having before. I never stopped wanting it, even when we were at each other’s throats. And before you say anything, just consider —” He trails off, his smile turning into something sly and mischievous “— we’re awesome kissers.”

She taps a finger to her chin and ponders all the infinite possibilities, just long enough to make him squirm. “I don’t know. Maybe that kiss was just a giant fluke.”

He grins another heart-stopping grin. “Maybe we ought to try again, then? Just to make sure we’re not getting into anything we might regret.”

She smiles back, and feels the same flutter in her stomach that she always felt around Peeta Mellark as a hopeless, awkward teenager with a crush. “That might be the best idea you’ve ever had.”


	10. Meeting the Parent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @ilovepeetaanddarcy-peemadarzy
> 
> This story, I want to write the whole prequel for...

Peeta questions his sanity as he guides the car along the long, winding driveway to Katniss’ childhood home.

“This was an awful idea,” he says.

“Oh, God,” Katniss mutters beside him. “Not this again.”

“I’m old enough to be your father, for Christs’ sake.”

“Shut up. You’re not even close to my dad’s age.”

“Fine. _Biologically_ speaking, I’m old enough to be your father.”

She stifles a laugh.

“Something funny, sweetheart?”

“Yeah, imagining you running around at age fourteen, corrupting the neighbourhood girls and knocking them up. Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?”

“Yeah? And what do you think your father might have to say on the subject?”

“Dad would know that I’ve been my own woman for a long time now, and that I’m more than capable of making my own decisions. Same as you, I’d hope.”

Peeta sighs and relaxes his grip on the steering wheel. “Of course I know that.”

She reaches out and sets a hand over his knee, squeezing gently. “Then calm down. Trust me, Peeta. Everything’s going to be fine.”

He nods, but doesn’t agree. As much as he loves Katniss — and has done since the day they first met — he knows her father is going to be a hard sell. Peeta’s family has met her already and all adore her like some long-lost daughter and sister, but the idea of presenting himself to Katniss’ father is enough to send him into a fit of cold shakes. Add on the fact that he’s just turned thirty-eight to Katniss’ twenty-four, and he’s fast considering all options to make the quickest getaway possible.

The small house, with its bright blue shutters and burnt-red eaves, climbs into view. Peeta’s stomach sinks to somewhere around his knees as it looms larger and larger, like some storybook monster out to swallow him whole.

Sweat beads along his upper lip. Katniss squeezes his knee again. “Relax,” she whispers, leaning over the console and dotting a sweet kiss to his cheek. “You’re a wonderful, kind, caring man with a steady job and a functioning moral compass who _loves_ me. There’s no way my father could hate you.”

As soon as he’s got the car to a stop and turned the damn thing off, he reaches over and hauls Katniss into his lap, draws his hands around her neck and tugs her mouth to his. Because he’s got no idea how she does it. She’s so prickly, so coarse, so sarcastic and aloof all the time, that when she says things like _that_ , he doesn’t feel like he’s got any other choice.

His hands roving over and under her clothing calms him like nothing else. Her lips on his drives and slows his heartbeat in turn. He sighs against her and climbs his hands up her back to toy with her bra clasp while she grinds against his swelling cock. He’s getting too carried away — her father’s just beyond the cheery yellow door — but much like the first time he kissed her against the bakery prep bench six months ago, he _just can’t stop_.

A tap against the window has him jumping high enough to hit his head against the ceiling. Her father’s standing there, just beyond the window, a scowl just like his daughter’s painting his dark, weathered face, and accentuating wrinkles deeper than they should be. Katniss shuffles herself off Peeta’s lap with a small, guilty smile, while Peeta just gulps.

He rolls down the window and tips his head. His cheeks feel like they’re on fire. What the hell do you say to the man whose daughter you’ve just been caught feeling up? “Mr. Everdeen, sir.”

Her father’s gaze rakes over Peeta, blank and expressionless. He mustn’t be too impressed with whatever he finds, because his attention slides over to his daughter without so much as a word.

Katniss leans forward and gives a sheepish wave. “Hi, Dad.”

He smiles then, and the change on his face is like night and day. “Katniss,” he says warmly. “You gonna get out of that car and give your old man a hug?”

Katniss grins and darts from the car and runs around to the other side. Her father sweeps her up in a hug, lifting her off the ground and spinning her around. Peeta can’t help but smile at the sight. But when they turn around and saunter off towards the house arm-in-arm, leaving Peeta sitting like a stunned mullet in the driver’s seat, he wonders if he’ll even get a chance to make a better second impression.

**XXX**

“Would you sit still?” Katniss hisses. She elbows his side, and he yelps. “God, you’re making me nervous.”

Peeta can’t stop his knee from jumping. The low, dark coffee table in front of him rattles like there’s an oncoming earthquake with every move he makes. “Yeah, well the crossbow over the fireplace is making _me_ nervous!”

Katniss explained to him once before that she shared a love of hunting with her father, but _her_ apartment isn’t furnished like Guns N’ Ammo magazine is going to drop by and take a photo spread.

Perhaps he’s being a little melodramatic. He’s not even sure if there is such a thing as Guns N’ Ammo magazine. And there’s only one crossbow on the walls and it looks very well made. Below it, on a ledge above an open fireplace, are a line of photographs: of Katniss and her sister as small children, flanked by their late mother; her father and mother as a much younger, just-married couple in front of a tiny, wood-panelled church; Katniss struggling with a huge fish, smiling a wide, gap-toothed smile; a much older woman blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. Happy memories of the sentimental sort that played no role in Peeta’s own upbringing.

Katniss rolls her eyes. “And, what? You think he’s gonna use it on you?”

He’s not sure what he thinks. Since he clambered out of the car and followed them into the house, Mr. Everdeen hasn’t acknowledged him once; he disappeared into the kitchen to fetch them all some drinks before either he or Katniss could find a second to introduce Peeta formally.

He’s in unchartered territory. While he’s pushing forty, he’s never been in a relationship serious enough, or even long-term enough, to warrant meeting the parents. In all his imaginings, though, he never quite imagined it going quite like this.

But he considers what he might be like with his own nebulous, hypothetical daughter, and how he might react should she bring home a drastically older man.

Then he understands completely.

Peeta reaches his hands over and twines his fingers with hers. “I think he’s very protective of you,” he says instead. “Something we have in common.”

He goes to kiss her again, because there is little else he enjoys more these days, but a cough from the doorway — too loud and obnoxious to be natural — slips between them and stays there like an impenetrable partition.

“Tea,” her father says as he steps into the room. He sets a cup down in front of Peeta so hard the china rattles on its saucer, and presses the other into his daughter’s hands before landing in a huge retractable arm chair opposite the sofa they occupy.

“This is Peeta Mellark,” Katniss says, before anyone has the chance to speak. Finally, her father’s eyes land on him, looking him up and down with the same due diligence his daughter gives dung beetles down at the university lab. “My boyfriend that I told you about? He owns the bakery I work at.”

Peeta reaches his hand over the table. “Pleasure to meet —”

“— So, he’s your boyfriend, and your boss, too?”

There’s a beat of long, awkward silence, before Peeta retracts his hand and gives a weak laugh. “I’m not sure anyone is Katniss’ boss.”

“Hmm. Kat, sweetheart,” Mr. Everdeen says, though his piercing grey eyes — more gunmetal grey than Katniss’ silver — don’t leave Peeta’s for a second. “You wanna give me and your guy here a few minutes, man to man?”

Katniss’ gaze darts between him and her father with a mild sort of panic. “Why? We just got here.”

Her father shrugs, and it only hits Peeta then just how much bigger her father is than him.

“Just want to have a little talk with him, get it all aired out before lunch, otherwise he’s going to be sitting there like a deer in the headlights all day. Won’t be anything too dramatic, I promise.”

Peeta doubts his ‘deer in the headlights’ expression is helped anymore by her father’s declaration, not while he’s looking at Peeta with a satisfied grin like he’s got him locked in the crosshairs. If anything, his heart’s racing even faster, his face and hands gone clammy and cold.

Katniss glares at her father until Peeta takes her hand and gives her a small, weak, smile. “It’s all right, love. I’ll be fine.”

Her father snickers; Katniss glares some more. “You’re sure?”

Peeta nods. “More than.”

“All right,” she says, but she doesn’t sound convinced. She presses a chaste kiss to Peeta’s lips before she rises, strides over to her father, and sets a hand on his shoulder. “Be nice,” she says.

“I’m always nice,” her father calls after her as the front door closes.

There’s a clock hanging on the wall above the television that Peeta swears is getting louder and faster with each passing moment. In the space between tick-tocks, Peeta catalogues every detail in the house that he can, from the faded floral upholstery on the chairs, to the old record player, surrounded by dusty vinyl, in the corner, to a large piano tucked up against the wall. He wonders if Katniss can play, though she’s never mentioned it before.

But when a throat clears, and Peeta finds himself back face to face with Mr. Everdeen, he’s not sure what else to do but seize his teacup and drain all the contents at once.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Peeta.”

Peeta swallows his too-hot tea and gasps against the burn in his throat. “You have?”

Mr. Everdeen nods, crosses one leg over the other. “Katniss mentions you in every phone call she makes. Did you know that?”

Was he meant to? “No, sir. I didn’t.”

“I thought it was strange, at first, being regaled with tales of her much older boyfriend,” he goes on, talking as though Peeta’s not even there. “She’s not a sentimental sort, my Katniss, or particularly social. The complete and total opposite of her baby sister. Since she was young, she was never one for making friends. Hell, she never had a boyfriend all through high school, never went to her senior prom, never did the slumber party thing or went to football games. Nothing they reckon a teenage girl _should_ do.”

Peeta nods. “She’s told me as much, sir.” He’d almost teared up at hearing it, too, but Katniss had brushed him off, declaring that she never minded, though Peeta suspected she did. Could anyone really be that happy, all alone?

“But I’ve always trusted her judgement. If she didn’t want to be friends with anyone or talk too much, fine; she might have had good reasons to keep to herself, and she never seemed upset. Her mother was quick to foist her into dance lessons, after school clubs, activities at the library, thinking there had to be something wrong. But none of those things suited her. Shit, I’m not even sure if _people_ suit her.”

So Peeta’s noticed. He’s never had an employee beg to take on cleaning duties to avoid the front counter before.

(Though he soon grew to appreciate and adore her presence in the prep room with him.)

“She’s solitary,” her father goes on. “Introverted to the point that maybe it’s not all that great for her. But we’re not islands, Peeta, no matter how long Katniss has led her life thinking the contrary.

“But maybe she’s realised that, or you’ve helped her see it, because you,” Mr. Everdeen lets out a great, heaving sigh, “are the first man she’s ever spoken to me or her sister about, the first man she’s ever brought home, the first person outside of this family who’s ever made her smile like that, the first man she’s ever let in, and as far as I know, the first man she’s kissed. And if I know my daughter at all, you’re probably the last of all those things, too.”

Peeta opens his mouth — God, he’s got to say something to this! — but there’s nothing forthcoming.

“I don’t know if the two of you came here today looking for some sort of approval, but the fact is, you’re dead right, Peeta: no one is Katniss’ boss, and the only approval you should be looking for is hers. And for what it’s worth, if she likes you, then so do I. If you’re interested, down the line, her mother’s ring’s waiting. Katniss has always liked it.”

Peeta coughs. “Mr. Everdeen —”

“— Rowan.”

“Rowan, I… I don’t know what to say.”

“Just promise you’ll take care of my girl. That you’ll fight for her to _let_ you take care of her. That’s all I want.”

Peeta swallows. “I love her. So, so much.” Hell, he’s been a goner since he first laid eyes on her, whether he wanted to believe it or not.

Rowan nods. “Then we’re fine. Her mother’s been gone since she was a kid, Peeta, and I’m not gonna pretend I like hearing my eldest gush — as much as Katniss _can_ gush — about you, but I’m not gonna be her gatekeeper, either. If she’s happy and you’re happy, and you’re making each other happy, then nothing else matters.”

All the tension has been drained out of the room; Peeta can breathe again. “Oh.”

Rowan quirks a dark brow. “Not quite the dressing down you were expecting?”

Peeta lets out a breathless chuckle and shakes his head. “Not really, no.”

“Like I said, Katniss can make her own decisions. Doesn’t mean I won’t break your neck if you hurt her, though. Though I’d imagine she’d be perfectly capable of doing it herself.”

Peeta gives a sombre nod. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“Then I’m glad we’re on the same page.” Rowan nods, sets his hands on his knees, and stands. “I’m gonna go fetch the girl. You want more tea?” His eyes shine with amusement.

Peeta shakes his head. “I’m fine, thank you.”

But there’s not enough time to get his thoughts straightened out once more. Rowan’s barely gone for a moment before Katniss darts back into the room and falls back onto the sofa beside him.

“Are you all right?” she whispers as her father resumes his seat.

Peeta smiles and takes her hand, pressing a kiss to her palm. “Perfectly.”

“He didn’t hurt you?”

He shakes his head. “Not at all. Your father’s a good man, Katniss.”

Katniss grins, and from the corner of his eye, Peeta can see Rowan staring out the window, a small smile on his lips, affording them even the perception of privacy. She cups Peeta’s cheeks in her hands and leans in to gently kiss his lips. When she pulls back, she rests her forehead against his and whispers, “So are you, Peeta Mellark.”


	11. Dialing in a Favour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @lifeisshiny

**_Back Then…_ **

_A heavy knock at the door echoes through Peeta’s apartment and wakes him up._

_The curtains are pulled tight against the morning sun, so his room’s pitch-dark; a quick glance at his clock tells him it’s just gone nine. He lets out a groan; he’s only managed an hour of sleep since he came home from work. The sooner he leaves that shitty supermarket bakery and its fucked up midnight-to-eight shifts, the better._

_He shuffles out of bed and doesn’t even bother putting a shirt on. If it’s the delivery man, Peeta figures he’s seen a thousand times worse than an unclothed torso._

_He pads out of his room, dodging his shoes, socks, and uniform strewn over the floor like a minefield, to the front door. He yanks it open with a grunt and barks out, “What?”_

_There’s a shriek, then: “Oh! Oh God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise you were — I’m so… sorry!”_

_Peeta lets out a yawn, stretches his arms high above his head. When he opens his eyes again, he freezes, flushes, waits for the floor to swallow him whole._

_Katniss Everdeen. His neighbour, and star of every fantasy he’s had for the last three months, stands at his doorstep._

_And she’s staring at his chest._

_And she’s licking her lips._

_He thinks he hears her whisper, “Holy muscles,” but that makes no sense at all. He’s not terrible to look at, but he doesn’t think his build is that awe-worthy._

_Unless he’s still in bed, dreaming? Then he’d be some sort of Adonis, that’s for sure. There’s no way this could be real life. And even if it is, he mustn’t be reading the situation right. He must still be out of it. All these early morning shifts are making him insane._

_“Hey, sorry,” he mumbles through another yawn. Even if this all is just a vivid fantasy, he should at least still be polite, right?  “Katniss, right?”_

_Her gaze shoots up, eyes wide and cheeks flushed bright red at being caught. If he had more of his faculties about him, he’d wink or smirk or something smooth. But, God, he just can’t right now. Doesn’t make any sense that he’d be so tired in his own fantasy._

_“Yeah,” she says. She shuffles from side to side, stares down at the filthy hallway carpet. “That’s me.”_

_He yawns again. Can you fall asleep standing up? “Hi, Katniss.”_

_Her lips curl into the most adorably sardonic smile he’s ever seen. “Hi, Peeta.”_

_His stomach does a tiny, excited dive. “You know my name, too?”_

_She shrugs and glances away. “Enough of your mail’s been mixed in with mine these past couple of weeks, so yeah.”_

_“Makes sense.” That’s how he knows her name, after all. He scratches at his flat belly and watches Katniss’ gaze follows his hand. “What can I do for you, Katniss?”_

_Her eyes shoot up again, and she gives him a guilty little smile. “Sorry, I’m not used to talking to people wearing so…” She shakes her head. “Never mind. I was wondering if you might be able to do me a favour.”_

_He blinks at her. He knew this had to be a dream._

_He takes a step forward, until they’re just a foot apart. “A favour?”_

_“It’s just… my classes start back up today, and I won’t be able to take my dog for her walk at midday. I was wondering if maybe you could take her?”_

_Reality, crushing and sober as hell, slams into him. He furrows his brows, purses his lips. It’s only then that he notices that her hair is in a practical braid, there’s a backpack dangling from one shoulder, that she’s clothed head to toe in skinny jeans and a coat. Gorgeous, to be sure — he’s not sure Katniss could ever not be completely gorgeous — but hardly the trench coat and loose curls he usually dreams about._

_“You want me to take your dog for a walk?”_

_Katniss nods. “Just a lap around the park across the road so she can do her… business.”_

_All right, then; not a dream._

_He must take too long answering, because Katniss is frowning and taking a step backwards. “It’s fine,” she says. “I can ask someone else —”_

_“— No!” His hand shoots out and takes her wrist. A warm jolt shoots through him at the contact. His fingers play at the soft skin there, fascinated, until Katniss clears her throat. He pretends to let out a cough and takes a step back. “I, uh… I can do that for you.”_

_She closes her eyes, lets out a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I can pay you if —”_

_“— Don’t be ridiculous.” He yawns again. “You’re not paying me for anything, Katniss. Definitely not a ten-minute lap around the park.”_

_She scowls at him, and the sight makes him smile. “I have to give you something.”_

_He hums, pretends to look thoughtful, because something about her stance and her unmoving scowl tells him she won’t take anything other than a hard-fought negotiation. “How about a favour to be named later?”_

_She quirks a brow at him. “That doesn’t sound promising.”_

_“I’ll never ask for anything you can’t give,” he swears._

_She stares at him like she’s mining his words for some hidden meaning. Whatever she dredges up, though, must be enough for her peace of mind._

_She steps over the threshold of his doorway and presses her housekey into his hands. Her hands are warm and soft against his calloused ones, and dwarfed in size completely. Peeta stares at them, pressed together, until Katniss drops hers and takes a step back._

_“Buttercup’s a good dog,” Katniss promises him. “She won’t give you any trouble.”_

_He looks down at the key, attached to a black, fluffy pom-pom keychain. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”_

_“And this may not be the last time I ask you to do this for me, if I can’t swap my classes around.”_

_His smile spreads into a grin. “Then I’ll make sure that favour I call in is a good one.”_

_Her lips quirk up in a gentle smirk. “I’m going to regret agreeing to that, aren’t I?”_

_“I’ll make sure you won’t.”_

_Her cheeks flush again, this time with a far gentler heat. “I’ll let you get back to sleep now, Peeta.”_

_He smiles as she backs her way through his door. “Have a good day, Katniss.”_

 

 

**_Now…_ **

 

Peeta lets out a great, heaving sigh, falls onto the empty park bench, and throws his arm over his eyes. The midday sun beats down with the scent of warm grass and wildflowers, but none of it is lifting him up like it should. “This is getting out of hand, Buttercup.”

 

The golden cocker spaniel buries her nose in a flower bed, scouring it for something invisible, but apparently quite the emergency.

 

“Sometimes I wonder if maybe I should’ve said no when Katniss first asked me to walk you. Maybe then I wouldn’t be in this stupid mess.”

 

It’s not true. He likes to think he would have found some way to talk to his beautiful neighbour one day, with or without Buttercup’s intervention. And while his growing feelings — going hand-in-hand with their growing friendship — for Katniss Everdeen are causing him more than a few sleepless mornings, pondering all the different ways of just how he’s fallen in love with her is hardly a difficult predicament.

 

But the constant back and forth in his mind — when should he tell her? What should he tell her? Should he tell her at all? — is starting to exhaust him.

 

Buttercup turns her wide, chocolate-brown eyes on him and lets out a short whine.

 

“I can’t help that you’re so picky about where you do your business,” Peeta says. He waves the little plastic bag in front of the dog’s nose. “I don’t see how it matters.”

 

Buttercup whines again and strains at her lead. Peeta hauls himself up with a groan. “Come on, then.”

 

They manage another lap of the park before Buttercup finds a place satisfactory enough for her business. After tidying up after her, Peeta leads Buttercup back to their apartment building, and tugs the key to Katniss’ door from his pocket.

 

“You be good ‘til your mum gets home, all right?”

 

Buttercup lets out a snuffle. Peeta takes the sounds as agreement.

 

Peeta slips the key into the door, but it’s already unlocked. His stomach drops sharply. He could have sworn he locked the door after he collected Buttercup, just like he always did.

 

He pushes the door open slowly, just in case. He takes in the full bookcases lining the wall; the small television is still there; the same stack of dirty dishes that was there when he collected Buttercup still sits in the sink, unchanged. There’s no sound, no movement. Nothing.

 

Peeta sighs in relief and pushes the door open the rest of the way. Katniss isn’t getting robbed; he’s just an idiot.

 

A huge wet sneeze echoes through the room. Peeta’s stomach makes that sharp, cold dive again.

 

Buttercup bounds in and leaps onto the couch, her tail wagging furiously. Not the reaction of a loyal dog fighting of a vicious intruder.

 

“Buttercup,” a weak, congested voice protests. “Off, silly girl.”

 

“Katniss!” Peeta steps around the wide sofa, cringing as he wades through a sea of used tissues, and finds Katniss lying flat across it, a soft grey blanket pulled up to her chin. “You’re back early.”

 

Katniss sneezes and sniffles. Her eyes and nose are bright red, and the few freckles that dance over her nose stand out against the dulled pallor of her skin. “I feel like shit. Thank you for taking Buttercup out.”

 

“You say that every time, there’s no need to thank me.” Peeta frowns and reaches a hand out to touch her forehead. “You’re burning up.”

 

“You should go,” she says, waving him off. “I don’t” — she sneezes again — “I don’t want to make you sick, too. We probably shouldn’t do our pizza thing this weekend, either.”

 

“You shouldn’t be alone when you’re sick.” He moves to her kitchen and fills a glass with cold water from the fridge. He thrusts the cup in front of her and tells her, “Drink.”

 

Her hard eyes don’t leave his as she takes the glass from his hands and drains it. She slaps the glass on the table and fixes him with a glare. “Happy?”

 

“Not yet. Scoot your legs up for me.” She lifts her legs enough for him to sit beside her, then drops them across his thighs. Peeta sets his hand atop a socked foot and gives it a gentle squeeze. In the four months that they’ve been friends, this has been their signature position on either her couch or his when they get together on weekends to split a homemade pizza and watch shitty movies. It’s comfortable, and strangely intimate even as it’s innocent, but as much as Peeta likes it, that someone as standoffish as Katniss Everdeen permits him this contact confuses the hell out of him.

 

“Why’d you even go to class if you didn’t feel well?”

 

“I thought I’d be all right.”

 

“Your classes are in incredibly sterile labs.”

 

“I took some tablets before I left!”

 

“Cold and flu meds don’t make your cold go away. And they make you drowsy!”

 

“I know that now.” She blinks, and her eyes take a little too long to reopen again.

 

“Come on.” Peeta hooks one arm beneath her knees and the other under her neck, and stands. Buttercup jumps at his legs and barks at him. “I’ll take you to your room.”

 

“Let me go! I’m not tired!” Katniss whines, but she makes no move to escape his hold.

 

Peeta laughs. “You’re hilarious when you’re sick.” _And adorable_ , he tacks on in his mind.

 

“And you’re mean!”

 

“You don’t mean that. I bring you cheese buns.” He sets her down in the middle of her bed. Katniss grabs a pillow and throws it over her eyes.

 

“Do you want me to bring you anything else?” he asks.

 

She inches the pillow up, until all he can see of her face is her lips. “Could you maybe just… stay with me? Just until I fall asleep?”

 

He grins. This side of her is a novelty he’s got no guarantee of ever seeing again. “You don’t get sick very often, do you?”

 

She sneezes and lunges for the tissue box on her bedside table. The pillow lands on the floor. “It’s this shitty city and its shitty air and its shitty sick people who won’t stay home.”

 

“I can’t disagree with that.” He sits on the edge of her bed. “Go to sleep, Katniss.”

 

She reaches out and takes his hand, twining the fingers together so he couldn’t escape if he even wanted to. “You’ll stay?”

 

He draws her hand to his lips and drops a gentle kiss to her knuckles. “Always.”

 

 

**_A Little While Later…_ **

 

Peeta has no idea how many hours have passed by the time he wakes up, but the sun hangs low in the sky, lighting Katniss’ room a deep, warm orange. Katniss still has a firm hold of his hand. Buttercup lies with her head on his lap, making small whimpers as she dreams. He’s only half-convinced the scene around him is a real one, that he’s not just some random transplant into Katniss’ world to be rejected at a moments’ notice.

 

Katniss is still fast asleep, her hair a wild mess over her pillow, her lips parted. He smiles to himself and brushes her hair away from her eyes before he reaches into his pocket for his phone.

 

By the time he’s called out of work, checked his emails, and ordered in some Chinese for them both to share, Katniss stirs with a congested groan, then a cough and a sneeze.

 

She rolls over; her gaze lands on him, and her eyes go wide.

 

“Hey,” he whispers, though he’s not sure why.

 

She looks at him in wonder. “You’re still here?”

 

“Of course I’m still here.” He reaches over and feels her forehead again. “Are you feeling any better?”

 

“Ugh, no.” She coughs again. “Not really.”

 

“Then I’m calling in my favour, all right?”

 

“All right.” She coughs. “What is it?”

 

Before he can think the better of it, he leans in and kisses her forehead, the skin warm and clammy against his lips. Katniss stills beneath him; he can feel her holding her breath.

 

“Let me take care of you,” he whispers there. “Please.”

 

Katniss pulls back just enough to smile at him, and _fuck_ , even all congested, contagious and gross, she’s still the most radiant creature he’s ever seen.

 

“That seems like a pretty crappy favour.”

 

He shakes his head. “Not to me.” He lets out a breath and meets her eyes. “Please let me take care of you, Katniss.”

 

She sniffles. “You’ll get sick, too.”

 

He grins. “Maybe.”

 

“Then I’ll have to take care of you. And sick men are the _worst_.”

 

“We are, but I promise I’ll take it easy on you.”

 

She sighs and presses her face to his neck. “Fine. It’s a dumb favour when you could have used it to, oh, I don’t know, ask me out on an actual date or something like that.” She laughs, and he thinks the complete and utter disbelief must be plainly stated on his face. “But if you want to take care of me… I’ll allow it.”

 

Peeta winds a tentative hand around her back and pulls her closer. “You will?”

 

“Yeah.” He can feel her smile against his skin, and it makes him beam so wide it hurts his cheeks. “Just this once.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @elricsister
> 
> Yet another one I think could be expanded on, but I don't know how.

The rebellion was supposed to make things better.

That’s what they’d promised them, anyway. The propos on the television spoke of a life free of oppression, full of opportunities and the ability to make your own choices and follow your dreams. A world where anything was possible, where you weren’t limited by the circumstances of your birth or the district in which you lived. Where there weren’t any games, no starvation, no injustice. Just equality and fairness for all.

The idea makes Peeta laugh now. What a load of bullshit.

Six years since the overthrowing of the Snow regime, and Panem is no closer to the utopia they were promised. Peeta’s not sure he sees the difference between surviving a rebellion, and surviving an arena.

It’s all just a different sort of a fight for survival as what few people remain in District 12 spend yet another night hunkered down in their tiny, tin-shack homes, and wait out yet another wave of violence and anxiety served up by vigilante rebels bent on revenge and retribution and unending scores of Capitol soldiers and sympathisers. Further across the district, a building is on fire. The old butcher’s building, maybe. It smells like bacon. Not that it matters; no one’s going to put it out, anyway.

Tonight, it’s Peeta’s turn to take watch in the bakery, guarding the dwindling staple bakery supplies from desperate thieves, smug rebel soldiers, and the occasional Capitol refugee that somehow thinks the status quo remains the same.

It’d be funny if it weren’t so heartbreaking. People who were once their friends, their customers, have turned into rabid mutts that would just as soon kill Peeta for a scoop of flour or a dash of sugar as they would praise him for baking up the goods himself.

They thought they were starving before. Turns out none of them had any clue what starvation was really like.

Peeta grips his small paring knife, the one they used to use to cut strawberries — what the hell’s he meant to do with this stupid thing now, anyway? — and presses himself as close as he can to the floor. Another band of scavengers, armed with blunt weapons and brute desperation, approach from the top of the street. He can hear them tip over bins and smash through windows, primal screams and wretched groans; Peeta can’t even recall silence anymore. What they hope to find, Peeta has no idea. Other scavengers — or maybe the same ones; who knows? — attacked the same place the night before. And the night before that, and the night before that.

Another, lighter set of footsteps crunches in from the other end of the street. Peeta squeezes his eyes shut and listens; they’re alone, he thinks, but weighed down by something. A heavy thump follows their every move. Peeta tenses, his hand cramping as he grips the knife hilt even tighter.

The shadow of the lone stranger peeks into his vision. Small, slim — too slim — bundled up in a leather jacket, with a tattered bag hanging heavily at their side. Familiar. Horrifyingly, heart-wrenchingly familiar.

The hinges on the front door are, though he can’t even begin to explain how, silent. He draws in a deep breath and holds it there as he pulls the door open, inch by terrifying inch.

The footsteps slow as the girl — God, he hopes he’s right — nears the bakery. He wonders if she remembers stopping with her sister to look at the cakes in the windows — back when there _were_ windows, at least.

She inches closer to the door as the noise from the scavengers up the street reaches a fever pitch. They’ll be coming in soon, and what will they do with such a small, slight girl, with a bag full of game?

Dull olive skin and an inky-black braid shine in the moonlight, and he’s certain.

She crosses close to the threshold of the door, and Peeta takes his moment.

He lunges out and seizes Katniss Everdeen around the waist, and tugs her through the door.

“What the fu —”

He presses his hand over her lips and meets her eyes with his, begging her to understand. Her heart thumps like a hummingbird’s wing, matching his heart beat for beat. Her body is tense against his even as it trembles, hands reaching up to dig blunt nails and blunter fingertips into his forearm, but he refuses to budge. It’s a long, desperate moment before her eyes go wide as she recognises him, and she nods once. Peeta slowly peels his hand away from her lips, grateful when they do little more than scowl at him, but keeps the other hand around her waist as he guides her down to the floor.

“Stay down,” he whispers to her as he pulls her tighter against his side. She snorts, but presses herself against the hard floor.

The scavengers give up and move on to disappear beyond the fence. It’s a wonder they even bother. Peeta’s not sure there’s anything left to hunt out there. Animals are smart; they’ve probably delved even deeper within the forest. Deeper than most would be willing to go, anyway.

With the exception, maybe, of the girl pressed against him.

He picks himself up off the ground and offers a hand to help her do the same. She is thorough in ignoring it, and his hand falls limply back to his side.

“Are you okay?” he asks her when he’s sure they’re alone.

“ _How dare you_ ,” she growls at him. “I can take care of myself, you know.”

He almost laughs. They’ve barely exchanged five words over the course of their lives; how could he have expected this situation to go any other way?

“I know you can,” he says, slowly, like he’s talking down a rabid animal. “But, Katniss, what the hell were you thinking, walking around out there like that?”

“I know what I’m doing out there,” she declares. “I’ve been doing it long before District 12 became the eighty-first arena.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he snaps, a little louder than he should have. “What the hell were you thinking walking around late at night with _that bag_ , Katniss? God, what if I hadn’t been watching? You could have gotten yourself killed!”

She rolls her eyes, and his stomach sinks at the idea of her playing so fast and loose with her own life. “No, I wouldn’t have.”

“Yes, you would have.” He pulls at his hair, lank and greasy and far too long. “You know what they’re like, Katniss! It’s been six years since any of us had a regular meal. They wouldn’t have thought twice about killing you if it meant they could have whatever’s in that bag.”

She stares at him for a long, unbroken moment, but doesn’t say a word.

“I need to get back,” she mutters. “Prim’s probably worried sick.” She tugs up her bag and hikes it over her shoulder. “And may the odds,” she adds mockingly, “be ever in my favour.”

She’s almost out the door before he wraps a hand around her wrist and halts her in her tracks. “You can’t go anywhere now,” he says. He rubs at his eyes. God, he feels so tired. He doesn’t think he’s slept more than three or four hours a night since this all started. “You’ve got no idea what’s out there right now. At least wait until daybreak.”

“I’ll take my chances,” she seethes.

“ _Please_ , Katniss.” He runs his thumb along the inside of her wrist. “Please just stay here ‘til morning.”

He can almost see the fight draining from her, a slow, bittersweet process. “But what about Prim?” she whispers.

“But what about _you_ , Katniss? Don’t you deserve to be safe just as much as she does? Besides, didn’t Prim toast with Rory Hawthorne a few months ago?”

She doesn’t say anything; her jaw stays stubbornly set.

“Please just stay the night, Katniss. I’ll make sure nothing happens to you, and I’m certain Rory will do the same for Prim. Everything will be all right.”

“I don’t need your help, Peeta,” she whispers.

He grins at her. He’s never heard a lovelier sound than his name on her lips. “Maybe I need your help, Everdeen.”

She sighs, but slides her bag off her shoulder. It lands with a thump on the floor, and she follows it down.

Peeta sits beside her, careful to leave a foot-wide gap between them. He picks up the small paring knife again and turns it over in his hands. Aside from the dull crackling of the fire across the district, there’s no other sound or person now to quell the silence of the dying district.

Neither of them sleep that night. Peeta’s never been more aware of another person in all his life.

Katniss clears her throat as the sun begins to peek over the horizon. “Peeta?” she whispers.

He glances over at her, studies her profile in the quiet darkness. He’s made a career out of studying Katniss Everdeen, but he’s never seen her like this, with her sharp cheekbones stark and hollow in the low light. Beautiful and terrifying all at once. “Yeah?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

He can’t imagine what she could possibly want to know from him. “Uh, sure, I guess.”

“How long have you been in love with me?”

He chokes on his next breath of air. “What?” he splutters.

Katniss sighs again. “Everyone likes to think I’m this stupid, oblivious girl who doesn’t notice anything happening around her. But I see a lot more than people think.” She turns and looks at him, her wide eyes the same colour as a storm cloud. “I see _you,_ Peeta. I always have.”

He furrows his brow, tries not to let the rising hope get the best of him. “What are you trying to say, Katniss?”

She shakes her head. “You haven’t answered the question.”

He sighs, leans his head back against the crumbling wall. Is he dreaming? He must be… “Since I was five. Almost all my life. I can’t remember what it feels like not to love you.”

He wonders if perhaps he’s divulged too much, but she nods, like it’s no big shock.

“Since I was fifteen.”

“Excuse me?” Because there’s no way she’s admitting to what he thinks she’s admitting.

Even in the low light, he can see the bright blush that takes over her features. Somewhere in the distance, a mockingjay sings.

“I might have noticed before, when you gave me the bread. I ignored it then, but I think I noticed it properly when I was fifteen.”

“Noticed what?” he whispers. He wants to crawl closer, take her hand in his, but he can’t, not yet.

“Noticed you.” She stands abruptly, takes her bag and hefts the strap over her shoulder. “It’s getting light out,” she says, a little too quickly. “I need to go home.”

He scrambles back to his feet. She can’t leave him now. Not after she’s told him _that_. “I’ll walk you.”

She glances around the derelict shack the bakery has become. “But what about here?”

He shakes his head. “My father and brother are upstairs. They’ll come down soon. It’ll be fine.”

She shrugs like it makes no difference to her, but there’s an indefinable spark in her eyes that tells him it makes all the difference in the world.

“All right, then.”

He follows her onto the street and out of what’s left of the town. There’s no difference now between the roads in the town and the roads in the Seam. They’re all filthy, all covered with the same fine layer of coal dust, ash, and broken glass.

The sun peeks out higher as they approach the Seam, long shadows behind them their only company. In the light of day, the district looks like a warzone, but after last night and earlier that morning, he decides to seize onto what little bits of beauty he can still find and hold onto them with all his might.

Starting with the radiant, brave, incredible woman walking beside him.

“Katniss?” he asks.

She hums. “Yeah?”

“Do you think this would have happened… you would have said anything, before?” he asks, even though he’s never been more afraid of an answer to a question in all his life. “You know… before all this, or if it never happened?”

He listens to her sigh, and her hand brushes against his. “I don’t know, Peeta. But it’s happening now. Maybe it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, but isn’t that enough?”

He takes her hand and weaves their fingers together. He smiles down at her. “Yeah. I think it might be.”


	13. The Wonder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @bandathebillie
> 
> This one I'm sure I'll be expanding on one day. The idea's too cool not to. Again, though, probably not until much later this year. (Like, around November, probably, when uni's done).

The co-ordinates have been tattooed on Peeta’s brain for as long as he can remember.

He’s certain they aren’t wrong, but he pulls his great-great-uncle’s old journal out of his pocket and checks them again. And double-checks his position against the GPS. He glances back between them once, twice, three times more, but he’s right where he should be.

If there is such a place as Themyscira, Peeta should be right on top of it.

Peeta’s stomach swoops low, and he swallows back the rise of nervous bile in his throat. He hates to call his great-great-uncle a liar, but the miles upon miles of smooth, crystal blue ocean surrounding his little, rented sailboat, broken only by high, jagged spires jutting out of the water, seem to make the accusation for him.

“Fuck,” he mutters to himself.

He should turn back now. He’s here and seen the place his great-great uncle wrote of in ramblings so mad and unbelievable it should have been Peeta’s first clue _not_ to retrace his steps. Themyscira doesn’t exist, and his great-great uncle was probably a little loopy from the war. That should be that. He should go back home, contend with his father’s sympathetic, though useless platitudes, and his mother’s cruel — but common — jabs about what a failure he turned out to be. But Peeta, more than a little enamoured with his war-hero relative, couldn’t help but make the trip anyway. Just to _see_. Or not see, he supposes.

But even with all the evidence piling up around him, Peeta can’t ignore the pull low in his gut that tells him there’s something _more_ to what he’s seeing. After all, great-great Uncle Steve crashed here — he didn’t sidle up in a boat.

There must be something he’s missing. He stands in the centre of the narrow stern and turns in a slow circle. If he weren’t so lost, he might be able to enjoy the view around him; he’s only seen the ocean twice before. He commits each little glint of light off the water to memory, to draw when he goes back home.

He catches it from the corner of his eye; an unnatural ripple of rainbow-coloured light at the base of one of the spires.

It’s hidden well enough, nothing a passer-by would notice, but Peeta seizes onto it like a lifeline. A hint, at last.

He steers the boat towards the spire and gives it as wide a berth as he can afford. Up close, it’s even more obvious, and spanning at least thirty feet across and up. If he didn’t know any better, he’d guess it was electric, man-made.

But that’s impossible.

But there’s something about the air that seems charged to the touch. He reaches out to touch the rippling wall and yelps not just at the full-bodied tingle washing over him, but at the fact that his hand has vanished.

Before he has a chance to yank his hand back, something tugs him through the rest of the way. Peeta yells as his feet leave the boat and his body hits water, riding a warm, turbulent current headfirst into another spire.

His head feels like it’s on fire where it was torn open against the rocks, but Peeta figures there’s no real sense in worrying since he’s probably going to die soon anyway. Blood drips into his rolling eyes while the world goes dark, and last thing he sees is a sliver of land topped with a great mountain, and a young woman slicing her way through the waves to meet him.

 

**XXX**

It feels like a week passes before Peeta comes to again. The world around him feels thick and unstable, tinged by something that feels…

The best word he’s got is _magical_.

Still, he’s not sure he wants to open his eyes yet. His head feels spilt down the middle, and each breath he draws in burns his lungs. But the rest of him is so comfortable, like he’s resting on a cloud, wrapped in the warmest, softest of blankets.

Is this heaven? He’s not a strong swimmer, and coupled with his head injury, death was certain.

A cool hand settles on his forehead and probes over the patch of gauze sitting across his left temple. The movements are deft and practiced, but Peeta can’t help but wince when the fingers dance a little too firmly over his cut, sending his world into a carousel.

“Oh,” says a soft, young female voice. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise you were awake.”

Peeta opens his eyes, but nothing wants to focus. All he can see of the girl in front of him is a foggy outline of bright blonde hair and what he thinks are white bedsheets.

He goes to sit up, but the motion makes his stomach roil and the room spin.

The cool hand sets itself against his shoulder and guides him back down on the bed. “Lie back down,” she says. “You’ll make things even worse if you don’t stay still.”

He sucks in short, sharp breaths as the pain recedes and his vision clears. “Who are you?”

“I am called Primrose.”

“Primrose,” he repeats as she dabs at his face with a damp cloth. “That’s a pretty name.”

She grins at him. “Thank you!” She peers at him closely, and he can make out the bright sky-blue of her eyes. “What are you called?”

“My name is Peeta.”

“What an odd name,” she says, scrunching her nose. “You are a man, yes?”

Peeta almost laughs, but the serious, pensive look on Primrose’s face lets him know it isn’t a joke.

“Yes, I’m, uh… I’m a man.”

Primrose’s eyes sparkle. “Fascinating. How are you feeling now, Peeta?”

Peeta manages a weak chuckle. “Awful, to be honest. Sorry.”

She smiles. “It’s not your fault. When Katniss brought you in, we all thought you were dead. She saved your life, you know.”

“Uh, no. I don’t… know.”

Primrose hums, skips across the room and dunks the cloth in a basin in the far corner. His eyes sting, but he manages to take slow stock of his surroundings, what little of them there are. All he can tell is that the room he’s in is large, lined with cool stone and lit by torches on the walls. Close to the basin is a wide door, covered by a silvery gauze curtain. Beyond it, long shadows flicker, disappearing and reappearing in turn. Is he back in Greece? Primrose does seem to be wearing a chiton…

And he does seem to be naked.

“I suppose you wouldn’t. It terrified Katniss, though, finding you out there, bleeding like that. Death isn’t something we see here all that often.”

Peeta can’t keep track of all the questions he has for that sentence.

He starts with the easiest. “Who’s Katniss?”

Primrose bounds back to his side. “Oh! She’s my sister. She swum out to save you.”

“When was that, exactly?”

Primrose stares at the cloth in her hands. “Four days ago.”

“Uh-huh." His head is spinning again. "And where are my clothes?”

Primrose squeaks as her cheeks flush. “Oh! Well, they were so unusual. We took them to be cleaned and mended when Katniss brought you ashore, and —”

A thumping echo sounds from somewhere beyond the room, like a knock on a door. This room must be deep inside it’s building, or perhaps underground.

A hard voice calls out, “Primrose?”

Primrose’s eyes widen before she runs behind the gauzy curtain and out of the room without a word. Peeta strains to listen to Primrose’s soft voice, but the other woman speaks over her in a voice harsh and imposing, like she needs to be heard. So much like his mother’s if it weren’t for the edge of desperation.

“Is he awake, Primrose? Does he bring news of Diana?”

“Diana?” he mutters. The name was written a thousand times in his great-great-uncle’s journals, but he’s never met a woman by that name.

“Yes?” The footsteps rumble closer like oncoming thunder before they come to a halt in front of his bed. He looks up, and in front of him is one of the most striking women he’s ever seen: taller than him by at least a foot, with burnished silver hair cinched in a tight braid, hidden behind a golden crown.

The woman — a _Queen_ — is flanked by a single archer; a petite woman dressed in what looks like leather battle armour, with a long black braid flickering with red from the fire, and silver eyes the same colour as moonlight. Her lips are scowling and her arrow is nocked and ready, aimed right between his eyes. She stares him down — for the strategic edge, he’s sure — but he stares right back and gulps, his mouth gone dry; she’s beautiful, more radiant than the sun.

“You, boy.” The Queen sneers at him. Reluctantly, his gaze leaves the archer. “Do you bring news of Diana?”

“No, I…” He stops with a groan, rubs at his stinging eyes. “I don’t know anyone called Diana, sorry.”

The woman scoffs and sounds more like his mother than ever. “Die now, then, if you’re of no use at all.”

He says the only thing he can think of:

“Please don’t kill me.”

It doesn’t sound anywhere near as convincing as he needs it to.

The Queen narrows her eyes at him, but signals for the archer to lower her bow. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“I don’t… please, just… where am I?”

The Queen blinks. “The Island of Paradise, Themyscira.”

“Themyscira?” He almost laughs. “You mean… I found it?”

“Found it?” The Queen gives him an incredulous look as the archer furrows her brows together. “You mean you were looking for us?”

“I… uh, not you specifically. I read about it, in a journal.” He swallows. “Steve Trevor was my great-great uncle. He wrote about this place in his journals. I'm trying to retrace his steps.”

“Steve Trevor?” the Queen repeats in a voice like poison. “Think carefully before you say anything more, young man. A connection to Steve Trevor will not work in your favour. Katniss?”

The archer snaps to attention. Peeta glances over at Primrose and mouths, _Katniss,_ his eyebrows raised in question to which Primrose gives a miserable nod. He almost smiles at that; sibling relationships are the same everywhere.

“Yes, Your Majesty?”

“Stay with the prisoner until a decision is reached. I will call for you again soon.”

Katniss bows low as the Queen leaves the room. As soon as the footsteps are gone, Primrose marches up to her sister and swats her hand. “Katniss! Put down your bow! It’s not like he can go anywhere.”

“You heard her, Prim.”

“She said nothing about keeping an arrow on him at all times.”

“It was implied! And aren’t you late for your lessons with the healer?”

Primrose glares at her sister.

Katniss gives a smug smile. “Better get a move on, little duck. You know Persephone doesn’t like tardiness. She might not allow you back if you’re late.”

Primrose sighs, but stalks about the room, gathering her things, in the most melodramatic manner Peeta’s ever seen. Even Katniss is watching on with half a smile.

“It was nice meeting you, Peeta,” Primrose says at the door. “I hope they don’t decide to kill you.”

She’s being serious. “I hope they don’t decide to kill me, too.”

Katniss snorts and Primrose glares some more. She takes up a little bag he didn’t see before and huffs her way out the door.

The only sound that’s left in the room is the crackling of the torches and the all but audible noise of Katniss judging him while she inspects her bow like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world.

“Uh, hi?” he offers. “My name’s Peeta.”

Katniss scowls at him some more, looking him up and down like she’s bemused by the sight of his naked torso; Peeta’s cheeks feel warm as he tugs the blankets higher to cover his chest.

“Uh, Primrose said you saved me? Thank you, for that.”

Katniss shrugs and sets her bow against the wall. “I didn’t know who you were. If I’d realised you were a man from the start I would have just left you out there to drown.”

“Ouch. That’s cold.”

She shrugs again. “You’re a man,” she says, as though it explains everything.

“And there aren’t any men here, are there?” His great-great uncle’s journals documented that fact well.

She gestures around her. “We’ve no real use for them.”

“You’ve no need for procreation?”

Her dusky olive cheeks flush red. “We have our methods.”

“Which you obviously can’t speak about with an outsider like me, right?”

A tiny hint of a smirk lifts her lips. “Obviously.” She watches him closely, cocking her head in thought. “You aren’t ugly, though.”

He quirks a brow at her. “Thank you, neither are you. Did you think I would be ugly?”

“Not you specifically,” she clarifies. “Your entire gender.”

“I’m a particularly fine specimen, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t.” But he can hear the tiny note of amusement in her tone.

“Should you even be talking to me?”

“Probably not,” she concedes. “But this is far from a common occurrence, and Queen Hippolyta hardly has sanctions in place for this sort of thing. I can’t help but be a little bit… curious.”

She peers at him closely, as though he’s an experiment come to an unexpected conclusion. There’s no heat behind her gaze: just abject curiosity he’s happy to fulfill if it means this beautiful girl close to him again.

“You have hair on your chin,” she whispers.

“I do.” He nods and clears his throat. “So, uh… what are they discussing out there?”

She hums, but doesn’t move away. “Your sentence.”

“They’re having my trial out there? Without me?” Peeta cries, and now she pulls back. “Shouldn’t I be given the opportunity to defend myself?”

Katniss shakes her head. “You may be able to speak later, but please keep in mind, you arrived here, at our hidden sanctuary, against our will. And you’re a man, to boot, not to mention your affiliation with Steve Trevor. Had you been a woman, this might have gone a little differently, but no. Your trial will go on without you, as per our laws.”

“And they’re totally fair laws, I’m sure,” he says wryly. “When do you think I’ll be able to leave? I have a life to get back to… I just wanted to _see_ here.”

“Special circumstances were allowed for your relative, Peeta, that most likely will not be allowed to repeat again.”

Peeta’s blood runs cold, but he can’t bring himself to believe what she’s saying. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t think you appreciate the severity of the situation you’re in, Peeta. I’m saying that if you aren’t sentenced to death for trespassing on our island, you will not be permitted to leave, either.” She states it like a plain fact, like it isn’t rocking the very foundations of his world.

“You will remain on Themyscira as a prisoner for the rest of your life.”


	14. Man Flu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @outofthemarr

Though she’s heard tell of it before, through pop culture more than anywhere else, Katniss has never witnessed the much-lauded ‘man-flu’.

Gale and his brothers never seem to get sick; must be all that fresh, mountain air. She has no recollections of her late father ever getting sick. Boys in her classes at school and in college would do as they were supposed to and call out if they were sick, so she never saw it there, either. The worst she’s ever seen is a nasty hangover, but even they’re gone in due time, and most guys she knows wear them like a badge of honour or something.

She knew it had to be a matter of time. She and Peeta have been together for a little over a year now, living together for the past four months. A cold for either of them was going to happen sooner or later. She’d been banking on her getting it first, since she’s far more likely to be in close quarters with a contagious child than he is, but when Peeta came home the night before after spending the afternoon with his brother and niece, he let out a sneeze and did the most ungodly, wet, sticky sniffle she’s ever heard, and she knew their time was up.

She frowns as she climbs the stairs, a hot bowl of broth clasped in her hands. As she reaches their bedroom door, a wailing moan reminiscent of the soon-to-be-deceased greets her.

Katniss steps over the threshold and scowls at the sight; Peeta in bed with the blankets pulled up to his chin like a plague victim, surrounded by a sea of snotty tissues overflowing from a bin already full of them. A half-empty bottle of cough syrup sits on the bedside table, along with a thousand tiny, balled-up lozenge wrappers.

“Stop acting like you’re dying, Peeta.”

Peeta sneezes and smacks his chapped lips together. “I am totally dying, Katniss.”

She winces at the sound of his voice, like his throat’s gone through a blender. “I brought you dinner.”

He coughs. “Soup?”

She nods. “Soup.”

He pushes himself up the bed until he’s reclining against the pillows. “Will you help me eat?”

“Help you eat?” She balks at him. “What are you, two?”

“But I’m sick, Katniss!”

“Yeah, with the flu! Not bloody… tick paralysis!”

Peeta flops back against the pillows and groans. “You’re so mean to me. I fed you when you broke your wrist.”

She dismisses the mean comment, even though it stings a little — he’s delirious after all. “I didn’t ask you to do that. I only broke one wrist, Peeta. I could have fed myself just fine on my own.”

He pouts at her. “Katniss, all this arguing is making my soup go cold.”

She rolls her eyes, but slides onto the bed beside him. He turns his bright blue eyes, glassy with fever, on her, and grins, and she can’t help but return it.

She holds the spoon out for him and he leans forward like an eager puppy, sucking it between his lips with an obnoxious slurping sound. She tries not to cringe at his mouth-breathing and squeaking nostrils and she repeats the motion, over and over again, until the bowl’s empty.

“Thank you, Katniss,” he wheezes. “I feel much better now.”

She snorts and slips off the bed, the spoon clattering against the edge of the bowl. “No, you don’t. You need more of those flu meds?”

He nods, and his lank curls fly everywhere. “That might be nice.”

“I'll get those for you. Want anything else? Another box of tissues, maybe?”

“No, I got lots of those. Maybe just another drink of water?”

“Consider it done.” She wades back though the used-tissue ocean and gets to the door before Peeta croaks out her name again.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry I said you were mean before, Katniss.” He sniffs, grabs another tissue from the bedside table, and honks his nose into it. “You aren’t mean at all. You’re the best girlfriend a guy could ask for.”

She quirks a brow and him and smirks. “Even when I think you’re absolutely leaky and disgusting and annoying and refuse to sleep in the same bed as you?”

He nods solemnly. “Even then.”

Katniss grins and turns for the stairs, calling over her shoulder: “Good to know. Because I’m probably going to end up with this cold, too, and I hope you know, Peeta, payback’s a bitch.”


	15. Remember When...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @litlifelover
> 
> Also, when I update here, I usually update three or four drabbles at a time. Take a look back, and see if there's any you missed :)

Into the cold still of night, Peeta whispers, “We should go somewhere again before she arrives.”

Katniss snorts, twists herself to look at him over her shoulder. The moonlight shining in through their open window lifts the grey of her eyes into an otherworldly, ethereal silver. “Really think it’s a girl, Mellark?”

Peeta reaches over and smooths a hand over her still-flat belly and grins. There’s no way this life could be his. He’s still that awkward boy fumbling for a word — any word at all — to say to Katniss Everdeen without her laughing, or staring blankly at him. (He’d never managed to decide which outcome would be worse). There’s no way he could be _married_ to her, or that they’ve accomplished so much together, made each other so happy, and now expecting a baby. It’s unreal to him, but if it really is a dream, there’s no way he wants to wake up.

“The Mellark line is due a girl, don’t you think? All those boys… the ratio has to even itself out sometime.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.” Katniss sighs and rolls over to face him, smiles the same smile that always makes him weak at the knees. Thank God they’re lying down. “Where should we go?”

“Hmm…” He slips his hand beneath her tank top and drags his hand along the curve of her waist, from the edge of her ribs to the rise of her hips. “Remember that trip we took to Corsica, so you could hike that trail along the coast?”

Katniss moans. “Oh, and those baguettes at that bakery? The butter?”

Peeta grins. “And the chocolate almond _mi-cuit_?”

She laughs, and the sound makes his heart sore. “You tried for ages to replicate those.”

“And I came pretty damn close, too, thank you very much.” He leans in and kisses her nose. “Might not be able to hit up that trail again with a baby on the way, though.”

“Probably not, considering all the times I stacked it along the way. Remember when we went to the Black Forest?” Katniss’ eyes flutter shut. “That cake was to die for.”

“Not the hiking trails?” he teases. “Or the castles we saw? Or the forest itself? Just the cake, huh?”

She lifts the shoulder peeking out of the blankets in a shrug. “What can I say? I’ve been living with a pastry chef too long. You’ve converted me.”

“Well, I still have that bottle of kirsch in the cupboard, if you ever want me to try and make it again?”

Katniss rolls onto her back with a strained laugh. “Don’t tempt me, Mellark. I’ll end up even bigger than a house if you do that.”

“And I’ll love you just the same.” He reaches over and pushes a loose lock of hair behind her ear. “What about when we went to Marrakech?”

“I loved it there,” she whispers.

“I know you did. I thought you were going to drown yourself in that tagine on that first night.”

“Like I didn’t have to fish you out of the mint tea?” she points out with a smirk. “And don’t think I didn’t see you gorging yourself on the flatbread and hummus.”

“Hmm.” He closes his eyes and smiles. “I’ve never had more perfect flatbread.”

“And I’ve never seen you get more sun-burnt.”

Peeta winces at the memory. Wiping his own ass turned into the most painful, tedious chore during that trip. “All right, then. What about Scotland again? No hope of me getting burnt again there.”

Katniss sighs. “Oh, God, it was so beautifully cold there.”

“You could have hiked all day long, if you wanted.”

Katniss chuckles. “I did one day. Remember when I didn’t come back to the hotel ‘til after eight? You called the cops and everything.”

Peeta scowls; he’s learned well, too, living with her for so long. “I thought it was later! It got dark there at, like, half-past four in the afternoon, and I —”

She cuts him off with a kiss. Peeta’s eyes slip closed as her hands climb up to cup his cheeks, her touch anchoring him back down to earth. Any residual panic or fear he felt over the incident melts away at her warmth, and he wraps his arms around her waist to pull her flush against him.

“Okay,” Katniss says as she pulls away, breathless. “So maybe not Scotland again, then.”

“Maybe not.”

She rests her chin against his chest and stares up at him. “Remember when you knocked me up?”

He quirks a brow at her. “Yeah, I remember.” How could he forget? She’d gone interstate for a conference for two weeks, the longest they’d ever been apart in their years together. All the phone and Skype sex didn’t put any sort of damper on their reunion, though. “Didn’t happen anywhere too interesting, if I recall?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think our bed’s pretty fascinating.”

“Hardly the ultimate tourist destination,” he jokes.

“I think that’s sort of the appeal.” She stretches out like a cat to kiss him again, her hips twirling in painfully slow rotations against his. Without a word, she stops, sits up and whips her tank top off, collapses against him again and drags her nipples against his chest. “I love travelling with you, Peeta. But right here, in this bed, with you?” She kisses him again. And again and again and again. “There’s literally nowhere else on Earth I’d rather be.”

“O-okay,” he murmurs against her mouth. God, he feels like he’s on fire. “I guess we can stay right here.”


	16. Shoot Off

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @booksrockmyface

She must think he’s a flat-out stalker by now.

Hell, maybe he is. It’s not a coincidence, the way his gaze has followed Katniss Everdeen around, as though magnetised, since they were kids. What might be a coincidence, though, is the way that nine times out of ten, her gaze is always right there to meet his.

Peeta’s too afraid to ask himself what that means.

He’s found her by accident this time. The Panem County Fair runs for a long, hot week and draws people from every district. The crowds are thick, the music loud, the air smells different with each step taken, and food seems to be priced per bite. This isn’t the sort of place he’d think to find her, even if the desire to ask her to accompany him to the fair — as his date — ran as rampant in his mind that year as it did any other.

She’s perched on a bench behind the one of the game stands, aloof as ever even as her gaze bores into him from afar. He gulps, glances up at the banner hanging above her stand. An archery game. Shoot the Target and Win a Prize!

He could walk away and start the cycle all over again. He should do that. He doubts there’s enough courage in the world to suffuse him in the face of Katniss Everdeen, and the absolute last thing he wants to do is give her another reason to never speak a word in his direction.

She beckons him over, just the barest quirk of her finger. Peeta’s eyes just about bug out of his head. This is a new development. More than he ever would have expected from her. He points at himself and mouths at her, “Me?” just to be sure. He swears he can see her eyes rolling, even from twenty feet away, as she nods.

His path to the booth is unhampered, surprising given the crush of people all around him. Before he’s even made his mind up, he’s there, and she’s even more beautiful, more stunning, more radiant up close.

He nods once and balls his clammy hands into fists. “Hi, Katniss.” It’s a whole two more words than he’s ever managed to string together in her presence. No matter what happens next, he’s buying himself a funnel cake as a reward.

“Hello, Peeta.”

Up until that moment, he’d never been sure she knew his name. His heart pounds like a madman in his chest. “How’s business?”

She smirks, and he swears his heart flutters at the sight. “Booming, obviously. Want to have a go? It’s five bucks for three turns.”

He leans across the counter and makes a big show of inspecting the game, probably rigged like all the others. “And if I win?” he asks, praying to all known and unknown deities that he’s not reading this situation wrong. “What do I get?”

“Your pick of all of it, if you make three bulls-eyes in a row.” She gives him a sideways smirk, like she already knows he’s not going to make it. “Medium plushie if you make two, a small one if you make one.”

He looks over at the targets and fakes a heaving sigh. “And if I make none at all? What do I get then?”

“You get my profound sympathies.”

He laughs and reaches into his pocket for his wallet. “All right. Three turns.”

She plucks the money from his hand, her fingers sliding along his as she does so, and pushes the plastic bow across the counter. “Good luck,” she says with a tiny, blink-and-you-miss-it wink.

Without a word, Peeta lifts the bow, and sits it into place. Lining up the target, he pulls the flimsy, blunt-tipped arrow taut, lets it fly, and watches with a grin as it lands dead-centre.

He first saw Katniss when he was five-years-old. He thought she was pretty then, with her twin braids and red plaid dress, but she didn’t intrigue him until they were eleven, when he saw her shoot an arrow for the first time.

Like an idiot, he wondered if she might actually want to talk to him if he could shoot an arrow, too. That they would have a thing in common to kick-start a conversation. Insane, eleven-year-old boy logic, because it didn’t matter for how long he practiced — for two years with a tutor at the rec centre, then another five years on his own — or how good he became, there was nothing to help him overcome his crippling shyness. Nothing ever came of his weird, secret hobby.

Except that he’s kinda awesome at it.

For which, now, he’s kind of grateful.

“I think I’d like to renegotiate the prize terms, if you don’t mind.”

The second plastic bow lands in the centre of the second target. Katniss stares at it with her brow quirked. “What did you have in mind?”

“If I make the third target,” he says, his voice unwavering, “I want to take you out sometime.”

“Like, on a date?”

She doesn’t sound as opposed to the idea as he would have imagined. He grins to himself. “Yeah, on a date.”

“I don’t know. Seems you weren’t being entirely honest with me. When did you learn to shoot so well?”

“Never mind that now. I have to keep a few cards close to my chest.” He lets the final arrow fly, and it sits perfectly in the middle, alongside the other two. “What do you think?”

“I think,” Katniss says as she pulls the arrows out, “that we can renegotiate those terms once again.”

Before he can blink, she rounds the bench separating them and stands at his side. She holds the bow in position, and without breaking eye contact with him, sends the first arrow flying straight to the target.

“If I can get all three in the centre without looking,” she says as she lets another one go, “I’ll go on that date with you, if I can pick where, when, what, and how.”

His answering chuckle is hoarse as the last arrow lands in the centre, all without her looking once. He rubs the back of his neck and lets out a low whistle. “Wow.”

She holds the bow proudly at her side and watches him with an expectant grin. “So? What do you think?”

“I think we’re gonna need more than one date, and that they always need to be decided via shoot-off.”

“I think we can work something out, just as long as you’re okay with always losing?”

“To you, Katniss? I could lose a thousand times and I’d always be okay with it.”


	17. Royal Wedding AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @iliveilaughiloveiread

One day, she’s going to wake up, and it’s all going to be a dream.

 

There’s no other way Katniss can rationalise the life she’s living. The life she’s about to have thrust upon her. There’s a word for lives like the one she’s living now: fairy-tale. Fabricated for the enjoyment of little girls everywhere. But still unreal. Impossible. Never did Katniss think that this sort of life could be for her, that a girl from a tiny shack in Panem, USA’s poorest district could go on to marry a _prince._

 

She smooths the soft, white silk of her dress over her flat stomach and considers herself in the mirror. It’s a beautiful dress. Plain and modest by some standards, perhaps, but classic and flattering, too. Regal, but that’s probably the whole point. Nothing at all like the four rental dresses available in the Seam, but she supposes the dress itself doesn’t matter very much. She grins to herself at the thought of Peeta’s face when he sees her at the altar. Only a short hour to go. She can’t wait to see him, either.

 

“Are you ready?” her mother asks from behind her.

 

Katniss meets her mother’s eyes in the mirror. “Yes.”

 

Her mother smiles. “So authoritative already.” She sets her hands on Katniss’ shoulders and gives them a gentle squeeze. “This family won’t know what hit them.”

 

Katniss gives a nervous laugh. “I’m still not sure what hit me.” Or what’s going to continue to hit her as she goes forth and makes a name for herself in the public eye. How does a person go from being as private and reserved as she is, to someone who will forever be the subject of speculation?

 

“You love that boy, Katniss. It’s clear to anyone.” She reaches out and smooths a hand over the intricate braid wrapping around her head like a crown. “Are you nervous?”

 

Katniss shakes her head. “Not about him. It’s just a lot to take in.”

 

“You’ll handle it, just like you always have.” Her mother sighs and adjusts the veil over Katniss’ face. “You were always meant for something bigger than the Seam.”

 

Katniss can’t think of anything to say to that.

 

But her mother saves her from having to try by grinning and taking a pleat of the skirt between her fingers. “Prim would have gotten such a kick out of this.”

 

Katniss glances away, blinks against the tears that have threatened every day since she became engaged at the thought of just how excited Prim would have been for her, had she still been alive.

 

“She absolutely would have.” Katniss shoves a hand under her veil and swipes a hand over her stinging eyes, careful not to smudge the delicate make-up.

 

“So,” she lets out a deep breath in a long whoosh and adjusts the veil, “how do I look?”

 

Her mother smiles. “You look like a princess. Now, I think it’s time we start for the chapel, isn’t it?”

 

Katniss glances at the clock on the far wall and swallows. “Yeah. It’s time.”

 

**XXX**

_“You want to set me up on a blind date?” Katniss repeats as she stirs a straw through her juice. The sweet pineapple, guava and orange blend doesn’t seem so appealing anymore. “I don’t know, Madge. Doesn’t that seem kind of… tacky?” Not to mention, her own personal idea of Hell._

_Madge grins and takes a sip of her own drink. “I don’t think so,” she says with a shrug. “If nothing else, it’s a great story to tell the grandkids.”_

_Katniss rolls her eyes. Since her marriage to Gale, Madge has become the height of domesticity, leading all their single friends to follow in her footsteps. “Assuming we even get past the introductions. Who is this guy, anyway?”_

_“A friend of Gale’s, from when he was serving in the UK. Blond, blue eyes. Dreamy accent. Absolute sweetheart. Totally your type.”_

_“Sounds more like your type from that description.” Katniss takes a deep gulp of her juice and sighs. “Does Mr. Perfect have a name?”_

_Madge’s eyes twinkle. “His name is Peeta.”_

**XXX**

The roar of the crowd is deafening. Katniss can’t hear herself think as she extricates herself from the car. It’s noon, bright and sunny, but the flashing of thousands of cameras still takes her by surprise. Something she should be used to by now, given that the wedding itself is being broadcast to the entire world.

 

But she can’t bring herself to frown, not today. Instead, she waves at everyone and smiles at the unending support she’s received from the English people since she started dating their youngest prince a year and a half ago.

 

She nods at the attendant holding the door and faces the steps leading up to the chapel. It’s insane to think that when she’ll make her way back down these stairs in a little over an hour, with Peeta at her side, she’ll be a wife. A Duchess.

 

The journey from the stairs to the chapel’s entrance passes her by in a blur. The cheering crowd dulls, and the thudding of her blood in her ears crashes like a wave against the rocks.

 

But when she stands in the door and finds Peeta’s father, waiting to walk her down in lieu of her own father, it all falls into beautiful, calm silence.

 

“Katniss.” He smiles down at her, the same warm smile of his son. “You look wonderful.”

 

“Thank you, Sire,” she whispers.

 

He takes her hand and settles it in the crook of his elbow. “No more of that,” he says, his voice oddly rough. “Ever since Peeta brought you home, you’ve been family. Today is only a formality.” His eyes sparkle with genuine affection as he leans in and whispers, “Besides, I’ve always wanted a daughter.”

 

Katniss chuckles to herself and holds herself straight as Peeta’s father makes some motion with his free hand, and the string quartet starts playing.

 

It’s like her vision collapses down into a tunnel as she makes her way up the aisle to the sound of violins playing her father’s Valley Song. She doesn’t see the people in the pews, the members of Britain’s aristocracy, the few friends and oddment family members from her hometown who were willing to make the journey. All she sees is Peeta, in his full military dress uniform, staring back at her like he can’t see anything else, either.

 

Her heart leaps further into her throat with each step she takes. Somewhere, in the background, people are snickering to themselves. Katniss admits, the look on Peeta’s face now is warranting of a snicker or two. The smile on his face matches her own, so wide and joyous and just a little bit ridiculous that she’s sure he’s never looked more handsome to her.

 

When they reach the altar, Peeta looks her up and down and lets out a breathy sort of laugh. His father shakes with his own chuckle as he takes her hand and pats it before setting it in Peeta’s. The bolt of sensation that lances through her at his touch warms her and pools somewhere deep in her stomach.

 

“Katniss,” he murmurs, low enough for only her to hear, as he leads her to the pulpit, where the smiling priest stands waiting. “You look amazing. Radiant.”

 

She gives him a tiny, sideways smirk as the priest begins to speak. “You look pretty incredible yourself.”

 

**XXX**

_“A prince, Madge?” Katniss screeches into the phone. She glances around the empty row of toilets and scrutinises them all as though someone must be listening to her, and goes on in a low, harsh whisper, “Tell me, how exactly did you manage to overlook_ that _particular tid-bit, huh?”_

_“Oh, God.” Madge groans. “Tell me you haven’t just ditched him in the restaurant halfway through your date, please.”_

_“What the hell else was I meant to do, Madge? This is crazy! I can’t be having dinner with a prince!”_

_“Why on earth not, Kat? Remember, I’ve met Peeta. Prince or not, he’s a great guy. Polite, fun, successful, kind, hilarious, generous, sexy as hell. If I didn’t think he would be good for you, I never would have set you up.”_

_Katniss sighs and slumps against the wall._

_“You do like him though, right?” Madge asks._

_She waits a long beat before whispering, “Yeah, I think I do.”_

_It’s the scariest part. Before he dropped the bombshell — and she’d felt like a giant tool for not recognising him earlier — she’d been having so much fun, laughing at his stories delivered in that wonderfully lyrical accent, flushing at the way his smile made her feel like the only woman in the room._

_“Then there’s your answer, Kat. Now get back to him. It’s not polite to keep royalty waiting, you know.”_

_With that, Madge hangs up. Katniss stares at the screen of her phone until it turns black._

_Katniss pushes off the wall and glances at herself in the mirror. She scowls; she doesn’t even look remotely like the sort of woman who should be going on dates with a prince, let alone one as all-round good as Peeta. Still, she reaches into her purse and retrieves her stick of tinted lip balm. Like it’ll make a difference. She swipes it over her lips and stashes it away again before she all but sprints back to her table._

_Peeta watches her make her way back with a strange smile tugging at his lips. God_ damn _, his lips._

_“There you are,” he breathes. “I wasn’t certain you’d come back.”_

_She sinks back into her seat and holds her head in her hands. “I’m so sorry. I just… this is… it’s a lot to take in, you know?”_

_He glances down at the table, frowning. “I suppose it is. I apologise, Katniss. When Gale and Madge asked if I’d mind meeting you, I asked them to keep everything else a secret. I should have told you what I am at the very beginning.”_

_She waves off his earnest apology. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just — how do I refer to you now? Do you have a proper title? Do I say, Your Highness? Do I —”_

_He reaches across the table and seizes her hand in his, halting her mad, incoherent rambling. The softness of his skin on hers is surprising, but warm, and his calloused fingers move along her own like he’s not even aware that he’s doing it at all._

_“Peeta,” he says, almost urgently. “Please, just call me Peeta.”_

**XXX**

As soon as the door is closed behind them, Peeta grips her shoulders and pushes her up against it. But he doesn’t kiss her right away. Instead, he presses his forehead to hers and runs his fingers over the slope of her jaw, down along her neck, all with a reverence and an intensity she’s come to identify as being uniquely Peeta’s.

 

“I thought I’d go mad not being able to touch you back there.”

 

She thought the same thing. Their first kiss as a married couple was soft, tentative, safe for church and the decorum-obsessed royal family. Certainly no wandering hands or searching tongue.

 

“So touch me now,” she goads him.

 

Not the best advice, considering they’re only in this cool, stone room at the back of the chapel to sign the forms before presenting themselves back to the public. But he takes it. Before Katniss can take another breath, his lips crash into hers and his hands dislodge her veil. Her hands delve into his hair and reduce his tamed curls to a wild, rabid mess. He licks the underside of her top lip in a move that has her shivering before he pulls her closer, every inch of her body flush against his.

 

“God, I love you in this uniform,” she says on a moan, running her hands along the neat rows of buttons.

 

“And I love you in this dress.” He wraps a hand around her thigh and coaxes her leg to rest over his hip.

 

“We don’t have long before they come back,” she whispers against his mouth even as she begins to rock against his erection.

 

“Better make it quick, then?”

She nods frantically and welcomes him back to her, gripping the lapels of his coat and kissing him again until she’s dizzy with it. His hips move into hers with a mindless rhythm that makes her whimper, rising and rising until an amused chuckle from the room’s corner has them jumping apart like naughty children. Katniss flushes so hard her cheeks feel aflame, but Peeta just grins at her and winds his arms around her shoulders to keep her close.

 

“Just your signatures on these,” the priest says with a smile. “Then you may go.”

 

**XXX**

_“Katniss! Over here! Katniss!”_

_“Katniss, what can you tell us about your relationship with Prince Peeta?”_

_“Katniss, can you confirm that Prince Peeta is your boyfriend?”_

_Katniss shields her eyes against the onslaught of questions and camera flashes, but it doesn’t make a difference. They keep coming and coming and coming until she reaches the main door of her apartment building and shoves her way inside._

_“Ms. Everdeen?” the doorman calls, alarmed. “Are you all right?”_

_“I’ll be okay, Mr. Chaff.” She coughs and slides down the wall to the floor. “In a minute.”_

_The paparazzi are still at the door, crashing against the glass and screaming their questions. Katniss presses her hands over her ears and leans her head down on her knees while her heart hammers like a wildebeest in her chest. Over the next five minutes, she’s only vaguely aware of Mr. Chaff calling the police, and the police coming to escort the paparazzi away from the building._

_“They’re gone now, Ms. Everdeen.” Mr Chaff’s hand closes over her shoulder. “You need help getting up?”_

_Katniss says nothing, but lets Mr. Chaff pull her back to her feet and lead her to the elevator. Once the door closes, the tears that had been threatening since she was accosted on the way home from the market make themselves known. She’d been warned that it might happen, since she and Peeta had been photographed on their last date before Peeta had to head back to the UK. But she’d never expected it to happen. Not here, and not while Peeta was gone._

_She’s not sure she’ll ever get used to it._

_Not that she has to, she amends as she wipes her eyes and gets out at her floor. It’s not as though the odds are in hers and Peeta’s favour. With all the distance between them now, they’ll drift apart just like any other long distance couple. Peeta wasn’t even sure when he’d be able to come visit her again — though he assured her he would as soon as he was able — and her visiting him in the UK is just out of the question._

_When she steps into her apartment, her phone is ringing. She lets out a long, despairing groan; the paps have her number, too?_

_Katniss tosses her keys on the table beside the door and makes a beeline for her bed. She throws herself upon it like a heartbroken heroine in a Bronte novel and buries her head beneath her pillow. Within seconds, her phone is ringing again. And again and again and again. How much trouble is it these days to change your landline number? Katniss has no idea._

_Her mobile starts ringing next. Katniss stares at the thing like it’s betrayed her somehow and considers throwing it against the wall. But a quick glance at the caller ID has her brow furrowing and her mind second-guessing everything; it’s not an American number, but it’s still familiar…_

_Katniss snatches the phone from its place by her head and all but stabs her finger through the ‘accept call’ button._

_“Hello?”_

_“Katniss!” Peeta lets out a long, low breath. “Katniss, I was so worried! Are you all right?”_

_“I’m fine,” she says, dumbstruck. “Are you the one who’s been calling me?”_

_“I’ve been trying to get through for the past hour; we’re all over the tabloids here, I thought you might be going through something similar back in the states.”_

_“You could say that.” Katniss falls back against her pillows and sighs. “I was followed home today.”_

_“What?” The sharpness of Peeta’s tone is unexpected. Not because she didn’t think he would care, but because in the four months they’ve been seeing each other, it’s not a tone she’s heard once. “Katniss, are you all right? Were you hurt?”_

_“I’m okay. My doorman, Mr. Chaff, he called the police.”_

_“Good man,” Peeta murmurs. “Katniss, I’m so sorry that happened to you. And don’t you dare say it’s okay, because it’s not.”_

_“Well, then I’m really not sure what else to say,” she teases._

_“I’d understand if… if this were a deal breaker for you.”_

_An icy sensation runs down her spine. “What do you mean?”_

_“I mean…” He trails off with a deep sigh. She can just about hear him running his hand through his curls. “I mean, I’m used to public scrutiny. I’ve grown up with it. But you haven’t, Katniss, and it’s a lot, maybe even too much, to ask you to give up your privacy for me.”_

_His words stun her with just how much they incense her._

_“Why even bother with me, then?” she hisses down the line. “If this was always how it was going to end, why the hell did you even bother?”_

_There’s a beat of stunned silence from the other end of the phone._

_“You think this was only a way for me to pass the time?” Peeta says at last, his voice low, slow, and dangerous. “That my feelings for you aren’t genuine?”_

_“What else am I meant to think? At the first real hurdle, that doesn’t really even involve you, you’re ready to call it quits?”_

_“This isn’t some silly little roadblock you can sidestep, Katniss. This is your quality of life we’re talking about!”_

_“Yes, well, maybe that’s something we should have considered before I started falling in love with you.”_

_The words are out of her mouth before she even realises what she’s saying, before she even realises they’re the truth. But with each passing second of silence, her stomach sinks further and further._

_And then: “You’re falling in love with me?”_

_Katniss runs her free hand over her eyes, swallows past the growing lump in her throat. “Yeah. I am.”_

_He stops and starts his next sentence so many times she loses count before another voice interrupts him._

_“I’m so sorry, Katniss, but I have to go. I have an event in half an hour.”_

_She sighs, resigned, but not all that surprised. It’s a wonder they lasted this long. So why does she still feel like she’s been kicked in the chest by a horse? “All right. Bye, Peeta.”_

_“Bye, Katniss.” He hangs up without saying another word. Katniss melts back into her bed, figuring there’s nowhere else she needs to be._

_Two days later, Peeta’s on her doorstep, eyes sunken and dark, blond stubble dotting his cheeks and chin._

_“Peeta?” She gawks at him. “What are you doing here?”_

_Instead of replying, Peeta surges forward, collecting her face in his hands and kissing her with an urgency that makes her gasp. He licks into her mouth, mapping every corner and crevice of her in a way he’s never done before. The sensation of it almost makes her weep as she returns it all twofold, pressed up against her front door._

_“I came,” he says when he pulls away the barest inch, panting against her lips, “to tell you that I’m falling in love with you, too. Might already be there, to be honest.”_

_He kisses her again. No more words are spoken that night._

**XXX**

 

Beyond the door, the crowd is chanting their names. Katniss swears they’re louder now than when she arrived earlier.

 

“Are you ready, wife?” Peeta asks her, his lips still red and swollen from their kisses. The same as hers, judging by the tenderness of them.

 

“As I’ll ever be, husband.”

 

Peeta goes a beat without moving, just staring down at her with the most incredulous grin on his face. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing you say that.” He leans in and presses another gentle kiss to her lips. “Shall we?”

 

She grips his hand for fortitude as he pushes the door open. If she thought the crowd was loud before, it doesn’t compare to the volume now.

 

Hand in hand, she and Peeta descend the steps, stopping halfway to wave to the gathered public. This part, the adulation and the adoration, has always been the most surreal part of it for her. But Peeta seems to thrive on it, always ready for anyone with a smile and a conversation that never feels forced or stilted. Even now, the look on his face as he shares their day with his people is so real, so excited and genuine and so, so happy, that she can’t help but smile, too.

 

Peeta turns to her and grins, wiggling his eyebrows. She laughs and nods, meeting him halfway in the kiss everyone else wanted to see. She closes her eyes to the people, the screams, the cameras and the lights, loses herself in his arms and the scent of cinnamon and dill that never quite seems to go away.

  
He pulls away from her lips just to nuzzle them against her temple. “I love you, Katniss,” he whispers there, just loud enough that she can hear him. “I’ll never take for granted what you gave up to be with me. I’ll be grateful to you forever for agreeing to marry me.”

 

She kisses him again to the roar of the crowd, because in that moment, she just can’t help herself. “I love you, too, Peeta, and I’ll be grateful forever to Madge for setting us up on that blind date to begin with.”


	18. Unearthed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for@vmariainez

When the first letter comes, Katniss assumes it’s just a weird scam. Sure, the seal in the corner for the tiny, far-off nation of Panem looks official (to her untrained eye, at least), and the thick paper far nicer than average, run-of-the-mill printer paper. But the sheer insanity of the words has her snorting in her morning coffee and throwing the page in the smouldering remains of Peeta’s tiny brick oven fire.

 

When the second letter comes a week later, her temper flares. Do the scammers think she’s an idiot? An easy target? Why not go after someone like old Effie Trinket in the apartment downstairs? She’d fall for something like this hook, line, and sinker.

 

_His Royal Highness has deceased… next in line… future Queen… please contact immediately…_

 

Royalty. Christ, pick a better one. She might have been able to believe outstanding debt, or that a Nigerian prince desperately needs her help.

 

 _Assholes_.

 

When the third, fourth, and fifth letters arrive, her rage reaches a pitch she’s never known before. Not even Peeta’s gentle touches and soft-spoken words can calm her.

 

She paces the length of their small kitchen, five steps up and down, while Peeta leans back against their narrow sliver of bench space and reads the most recent missive with a mild frown. Schemes like this must be illegal, and the way they’re pelting her with letters like they’re Harry Potter’s Hogwarts invitations has got to be harassment. Which government department would you even report this sort of thing to, anyway?

 

“They’re, uh… persistent,” Peeta says at last.

 

Katniss halts in place and rolls her eyes. Is that all he’s got to say? “They’re liars.”

 

Peeta shrugs. “Maybe. But even liars would get tired by now.” He sets the letter down on the bench and crosses his arms over his broad chest. “Do you think there could be even a shred of truth in what they’re saying?”

 

Katniss shakes her head. “Why would I think that? There’s no… there’s no possible way. It’s a hoax, Peeta. Nothing more.”

 

He drums his fingers against the bench. “You know, I’ve researched Panem,” he says. “Just recent news and stuff. Their king did pass away last week.”

 

“So? They’ve done their research. They’re competent scammers.”

 

“The royal family’s name is Stratford, the same as your mother’s maiden name,” he presses. “And the photo of the king and queen they had on the website… they looked an awful lot like your mother.” His gaze shifts to the floor while his finger traces the edges of the seal in the letters’ corner, the silhouette of a bird mid-flight, an arrow grasped in its beak. “How much do you actually know about your mother’s life before she came to the States?”

 

Katniss opens her mouth to reply, but the more she considers the question, the less she thinks she has an answer. Her mother emigrated, met her father, married, had two kids, did the whole Happily Ever After thing until it all came crumbling down. That was that. That was all Katniss needed to know.

 

Wasn’t it?

 

“Is it really impossible?” Peeta goes on, taking advantage of her silence. “You’ve told me before she came from Panem, that she was shunned by her family for marrying your father. I know how crazy it sounds, believe me, but could she have been royalty?”

 

Katniss shakes her head. If her mother had been royalty — God, she’s about ready to laugh at the thought — then where the hell had her family been when she died? When her husband and youngest daughter died? Shouldn’t they have intervened then?

 

But there was an older, stately-looking couple at the funeral. Standing off to the side, frowning but not crying, their hands plunged into the pockets of fur-lined coats that both looked to cost more than Katniss’ yearly salary. They disappeared without a word as soon as the ceremony was over. Katniss assumed they were the sort of people involved with the church who randomly rocked up to every funeral.

 

And if they weren’t?

 

Katniss’ heartbeat echoes in her ears like a frantic drumbeat. “Could you bring up a picture of the king and queen?” she asks weakly.

 

Peeta darts off down the hall, beckoning for her to follow. His tablet sits on the arm of their lounge, and the news article he was talking about must have been the last page he visited, because it’s still there when he presses the home button, and so is a photo of the royal couple that has Katniss gasping.

 

“That was them,” she whispers. The room is spinning around her. Peeta grips her arm and keeps her upright. “They were there, at Mum’s funeral. Those assholes just stood there and watched me bury her like they were watching a disappointing polo match. They didn’t say or do anything! Holy shit, Peeta.”

 

“I guess shunning someone is pretty serious business when you’re royal,” he jokes without humour. He swallows, rubs at the back of his neck. “And you had no idea of what she was? She never dropped any hints? Nothing?”

 

“Nothing,” she confirms. “I mean, she was always a little… I don’t know. I guess _proper_ would be the right word? My dad called her princess, but God, I just thought it was a nickname.”

 

She leans her head against Peeta’s shoulder and lets him wrap his arm around her. He drops a kiss to the top of her head and whispers there, “So, what do you think we should do?”

 

“Maybe we should call this Plutarch guy? See what he has to say?” She stares at the name, signed with a flourish, at the bottom of the page until the letters blur. She’s lightheaded; does this make her a princess, too? No, she corrects herself as another wave of nausea crashes over her. The letter says she’s a _Queen_. That there is a throne and an entire country waiting for her. The more she considers the title in her mind, the more the mere idea of that sort of responsibility, that sort of publicity, makes her want to vomit.

 

“Might be worth a try.” Peeta shrugs. “If nothing else, it’ll probably get the letters off your back.”

 

“If it’s not a giant scam.”

 

“Yeah.” But Peeta looks just as unconvinced, just as uncomfortable as she feels. “If it’s not a giant scam.” He kisses her again, and all she wants is to melt into him, let him comfort her the way only he’s ever been able to. “Want me to get the phone?”

 

“No. I —” She cuts herself off with a huff, stands straighter and squares her shoulders. “I should get it. If I’m really a… queen or whatever, I should make decisions, right?”

 

Peeta lets out a laugh. “And if I’m going to be your prince consort, I should probably get used to falling into line.”

 

She darts out of his hold and makes a slow beeline for the kitchen. His warmth comes up against her back as she lifts the phone out of its cradle and keys in the numbers. With every press of the buttons, dread rises higher in her throat like bile. Each little beep carries her closer to a life she’s got no conception of, no idea if it’s something she could ever want. But either way, she thinks as the dial tone rings, she’s going to find out.


	19. Cake On Your Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @infinitegraces

Katniss has only been to a couple of toastings before, for distant family members and some of her mother’s former patients. They’ve never been anything too fancy, but they’ve all been the same. Just the couple and their bread over the fire, and the invited townspeople singing the song behind them. On rare occasions, there’s a cake. On even rarer occasions, Katniss has been able to taste a piece.

 

Only ever a piece, though. Never anything more than a mouthful. So, when a server — dressed in a shirt so white she’s certain it’s never seen a puff of District 12 air before — hands her a chipped plate holding a large slice of soft, yellow cake with a layer of off-white cream in the middle, all she can do is stare at it.

 

She never would have pegged Gale as someone who would choose to have such a large, ornate cake, whether he could afford it or not. But, she also doubts Gale had much to do with the decision. This is just as much Madge’s toasting, too.

 

And of course Madge would want a Mellark’s Bakery cake.

 

“You know, Catnip, you can eat it,” Gale says to her, grinning. Katniss doesn’t think she’s ever seen him smile so wide, ever.

 

“I’m working my way up to it,” she says, nudging him with her elbow. “Where’s the newest Mrs. Hawthorne?”

 

“She’s around here somewhere, probably with Ma and Posy, learning all the Hawthorne women’s secrets or something.”

 

“Lucky her.”

 

“Lucky me.” He winks, and Katniss groans. “Speaking of lucky, though, you wanna tell me why the baker’s kid’s been giving you eyes all night?”

 

Katniss glances towards the serving table, where Peeta Mellark spent the entire night cutting up slices of cake and arranging them on plates. Like every time she’s looked up at him, though, his gaze is right there to meet hers. Earlier, he’d blushed and looked away when she caught him, like he’d been doing something wrong. Now, with maybe a little more of the sweetened mead making the rounds swimming in his veins, his gaze meets hers, unflinching and unmoving, like he’s waiting and searching for the right moment to make his move.

 

 _Ass_.

 

She looks away with a scowl, cheeks flaming with heat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she mutters.

 

Gale laughs. “Sure you don’t.” He gives her a quick kiss on the cheek and says, “Talk to him, Catnip. The poor guy looks ready to pop. Or punch me. And I don’t think Madge would appreciate either of those things.”

 

Without another word, he disappears into the crowd, accepting slaps on the back and hearty congratulations from everyone, Seam and Town alike. It’s such a strange sight in District 12, to see dark hair mingling with golden blond like it happens all the time. But, Katniss supposes, this wasn’t any ordinary toasting. How often does a lowly Seam miner marry the mayor’s daughter?

 

“I’m glad you’re here tonight,” a warm, familiar voice says near her ear.

 

She yelps, spins on her heel and almost slams into Peeta Mellark. His eyes go wide, and he reaches out to grip her shoulders, steadying her. “Whoa, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

 

“You didn’t scare me,” she mutters, taking a step back, but the frantic racing of her heart disagrees. “And why wouldn’t I be here?”

 

Peeta shrugs, kicks at the ground with the rounded toe of his shiny shoe. She can see the bright red tips of his ears between his curls. “I just thought…” He trails off with a bitter laugh. “I don’t know what I thought, to be honest.”

 

She rolls her eyes and takes a bite of the cake; sweet, and a little lemony, with a layer of fluffy cream in the middle. Delicious. “Whatever you thought, you thought wrong, Peeta. You always have. Gale and I are friends. Best friends. I don’t know how many times I need to tell you that.”

 

“Right.” Peeta nods, shoves his hands in his pockets. “I, uh… know that now. I kind of worked it out when Madge came in the other day asking for a toasting cake.” He lets out a weak laugh. “Imagine my surprise when she said she’d be toasting with Gale.”

 

Her eyes almost bug out of her head with disbelief. She sets the plate down on the rickety wooden table she’s standing near and takes a quick step forward, pokes the middle of his chest with the firm tip of her index finger. “You mean, you’ve known for _days_ that there was literally _zero_ _chance_ of me ditching you for Gale and you _still_ wouldn’t come and say sorry?”

 

“I know.” He takes her hands in his and holds them hostage against his chest. “And I am sorry. So, so sorry. Like, you couldn’t even imagine how sorry.”

 

“You were an ass, Peeta.”

 

“I was.” He nods solemnly. “A huge, colossal ass.”

 

She glares at him some more. “The biggest.”

 

A tiny smile tugs at his lips but disappears just as quick as it came. “Yeah. I know. It’s no excuse, really, but given… you know, everything, I guess… it seemed impossible that you could be even remotely interested in me.”

 

“What, that I could be interested in such a wonderful, generous, giving, caring man?” She scoffs and stares at the ground between their feet. “Yeah, how could that be possible?”

 

He says nothing, not that she really expects him to. He just smiles again, more genuinely this time, and stares down at their hands trapped between them.

 

“See, it’s stuff like that,” he says after a long moment as he plays with her fingers. “And the fact that it’s _you_ saying it…” He pauses and shakes his head with a chuckle. “It’s insane.”

 

“No,” she says, a little louder than she means to. “What’s insane is you thinking that I would spend all that time getting to know you, then _kiss_ you, and then run back to Gale like it was all some stupid joke!”

 

“He swaggered in and grabbed you like I was about to rob you of your innocence right there in the meadow! Forgive me if the messages were a little mixed!”

 

“I might have agreed with you, if I hadn’t spent the better part of that afternoon with your hands up my shirt!”

 

He grins at her, all wide and dopey. Her lips twitch with the urge to return it. “Yeah, all right. It was pretty insane of me.”

 

“And to think we might have been able to keep doing that if you hadn’t just ignored me when I came in to see you last week. Twice.”

 

He strokes a finger across her collarbone, making her shiver. “I’m a complete idiot, that’s for sure.”

 

“Some might even wonder what you’re even doing,” she goes on, side-eyeing him. “Speaking to me now, if you’ve got such a low opinion of me.”

 

He shakes his head; a stray, thick curl lands right between his eyes. “Not of you, Katniss. Never of you. Just of myself.”

 

“Well,” she says with a sniff. “That’s pretty insane, too.”

 

“Maybe a little,” he whispers. Their lips are only scant inches apart now. “Hey, you wanna get out of here? Maybe talk some more in private?”

 

Katniss smirks, grips his hand in hers and drags him out to the edge of the town centre and into the dark.

 

“Come on. I doubt there’s anyone in the meadow now.”


	20. The Logical Thing To Do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @lalabod75

It’s the most disgusting thing he’s ever seen.

 

Granted, though, Rye doesn’t need to be watching this. Hell, Peeta would string him up by his ears if he knew. But it’s the same sort of hypnotic that a car crash is: one glance and you can’t look away.

 

Not to mention, also much more entertaining than sweeping the paths outside the bakery.

 

Not that his baby brother’s love life is a _complete_ car wreck. Far from it. Just last month he’d been showing Delly the moves up and down town. The month before that, Madge. Before that, Bristel and so on and on and on until Rye’s pretty sure there’s only one girl — _the_ girl — left.

 

And watching his brother put the moves on Katniss Everdeen, after having spent the previous decade actively _avoiding_ putting the moves on Katniss Everdeen, is just painful.

 

More painful, maybe, than how blind he is to Katniss’ equally painful moves.

 

“Damn it, Peeta,” he mutters to himself. “Just fucking do it, God!” If he has to watch Peeta shuffle about on his feet doing the ‘Aw Shucks’ routine, or Katniss’ awkward hair twirling, for much longer, he’s gonna spew. Like, really spew. All over the baked goods and everything.

 

“What’cha doing?”

 

Rye almost throws the broom he’s sweeping the path with right over the roof.

 

“Fuck me, wear a bell or something,” he says, panting.

 

Primrose Everdeen’s — or Prim, so he’s heard her called — bright blue eyes narrow. “Is that how you speak to all your customers?”

 

Rye scrubs at his eyes. “Only the ones who scare the living piss out of me. Why? Were you planning on buying anything?”

 

Prim’s mouth falls in a spectacular pout. “I guess not.”

 

“So, why are you here, then? ‘Cause I hate to break it to you, kid, but you’re not really my type.”

 

The sheer amount of sass in her replying eye roll almost makes him laugh.

 

“You’re not the Mellark we came to see.” She glances through the window, where Peeta’s got his hands shoved into the deepest recesses of his pockets, that whole shy-guy thing down to a fine art. Hell, Rye’s pretty sure he’s blushing.

 

“He knows he’s got to be more assertive with her, doesn’t he?” Prim says, shaking her head. “You can’t dance around anything with Katniss and think she’ll get it.”

 

Rye scoffs. “Peet’s only half the problem. She does know he likes her back, right?”

 

“If she knew, she probably wouldn’t make so many excuses to pass by the bakery so often.”

 

Rye opens his mouth to ask _why the fuck_ , but Prim shakes her head. “Don’t ask.”

 

“Right.” He drags the word out until it sounds unnatural. “So, what are we gonna do about it?”

 

“We?”

 

“Yeah. I mean, they’re not gonna get anywhere on their own, are they?”

 

Prim frowns and glances through the window again. They’ve barely moved inside, except for Peeta to lean across the counter on his crossed arms, the dopiest grin Rye can imagine splitting his lips. It’d all be perfect, if Katniss wasn’t staring into the cabinets as though the beestings in there are the most interesting thing in the room.

 

“You’re probably right. Has she always been so socially inept?”

 

“Pretty much all her life,” Prim confirms with a nod. “Has Peeta always had a crush on her?”

 

“Since he was five.” Rye says mournfully. “He might as well still be five now for all the good it’s done him. You know they shared classes every single year until they graduated? Hell, for a few weeks in junior high, he even tried to join the archery club before the coach turfed him. All those years… never said boo to her.”

 

Prim crosses her arms and surveys him like a science experiment, complete with quirked eyebrow. “So, what do you propose?”

 

“Well, we have to help them, of course! They’re hopeless. I mean, look at them.”

 

More awkward shuffling and staring, though it kinda looks like Peeta’s also pantomiming a wrestling match for Katniss now, and she hasn’t laughed him out of the store yet. If that’s not a giant-ass hint to just say _fuck it_ and kiss the girl, he doesn’t know what is.

 

“I guess so. But _how_?”

 

“We need to get a message to them, one that neither of them can ignore, ‘cause I swear to _God_ , blondie, if I have to watch another weak-ass mating display from these two again, I’m gonna hurl.”

 

“Okay, great. But, how?”

 

“I’m not sure yet, but — hey!” Rye drags a finger through the thick layer of grime built up on the storefront window. A grin he’s sure must look maniacal to an outsider splits his lips. “You know, I haven’t cleaned these yet…”

 

**XXX**

This is getting beyond a joke.

 

It’s not like she has a crush on him or anything. That would be ridiculous. It’s all in the cheese buns. It has to be.

 

And fine. She can accept the cheese buns. They’re delicious and greasy, and just about the best study snack she can imagine. So what do Peeta Mellark’s ludicrously blue eyes have to do with it? Or the bright, winning smile he has for everyone? Or the way she’s caught him looking at her for the past thirteen years?

 

Absolutely nothing, that’s what. She nods to herself. Yes, sir. _Nothing at all_.

 

“So, I saw you at the archery tournament on the weekend,” Peeta tells her, shyly, as he straightens random bits and pieces on the counter out. Katniss watches his hands; they’re a far safer focal point for her than his face or chest, she thinks. Yes, his hands. His big, strong, gentle —

 

— What’s in those cabinets again?

 

“You were… incredible, really. The way you split the arrow at the end? I thought that was some Robin Hood type stuff. I didn’t think it was actually possible.”

 

“Thank you.” Her lips tick upward — it was pretty damn impressive — though she’s not sure what to say back. _Thanks! It was a giant fluke!_

 

“What about you, though?” she asks. “You had your last wrestling meet of the season the other week, didn’t you?”

 

As if she wasn’t already very, very aware of that fact.

 

“Yeah, I did.” He chuckles nervously. “Not a great day, really.”

 

“Yeah, I know.” Katniss peers further into the cabinets. Damn, the cupcakes look _fine_. “I was, uh… there that day.”

 

Her cheeks feel like they’ve caught fire, though she’s sure it’s nothing compared to how Peeta’s cheeks are almost glowing now. She trails her gaze just that little bit further up and meets his eyes with hers. Sky blue. Damn it.

 

“Yeah…” He coughs into a cupped hand. “I think I remember seeing you there, too. Not exactly my, uh… finest moment, losing like that in front of you… I mean, all those people.”

 

While she’s not a hundred percent sure how he could have seen her — she’d been way up the back and actively hiding her face behind a book to cover her blatant ogling of Peeta Mellark in a wrestling singlet — she’s absolutely certain he’s got her wrong.

 

“I don’t remember it because you lost!” she bursts out. “God, no. I remember it so clearly because you —”

 

A clunking sound, like a lock being turned, snaps in her ear like a firework. Peeta’s gaze slips over her shoulder and fixes like a magnet on something outside.

 

“Oh, shit…” he whispers.

 

He’s gone paler than milk. She’s almost too afraid to turn around.

 

“What is it?” she asks.

 

“I… I’ve got absolutely no idea.”

 

Lopsided hearts, some with arrows drawn through them, some without, are smeared all over the filthy window glass. Beyond it, Prim and Peeta’s older brother are making kissy noises so loud Katniss can hear the wet smack of them through the window.

 

Katniss scowls at her sister, but from beyond the protective layer of glass, it does nothing. That’s it, then: tonight, when Prim’s asleep, Katniss is going to cut off her braids. It’s just that simple.

 

“I… uh… I didn’t put them up to this, I swear.”

 

Katniss swirls around to face him. His cheeks have gone nuclear again, the tips of his ears almost red.

 

“Why would I have thought that?”

 

“Just all the… you know.”

 

“No, I’m not sure I do.” But Christ, the ideas she’s getting. “I should probably go, though. You know, sibling murder to commit and all.” She takes the untouched bag of cheese buns off the counter, slaps a ten-dollar note down, and turns for the door without waiting for her change.

 

But the door refuses to open, no matter how hard she jostles it. She growls and almost rips it right off its hinges.

 

“Can you open this stupid thing?”

 

“Yeah, sure.” His tone is a weird combination of irritation and resignation as he jumps around the counter and shoves his hands in his apron pockets, his trouser pockets, his shirt pocket, but comes up with nothing. He frowns and looks back at the counter before a loud, boisterous laugh outside has him turning back, seething.

 

“I’ve got the keys, little brother,” Rye sings, dangling the key in front of him. “If you want the door unlocked, you better pop the question.”

 

“What question?” Peeta snarls. Katniss quirks a brow; that’s new. “Rye, if you don’t open this door I swear to God —”

 

“You’ll what? Lose another wrestling match to me?” Rye taunts. “Won’t be too difficult with Katniss right there to distract you again.”

 

Prim giggles beside him.

 

“Come on, Katniss,” she says as she draws another heart. “Tell him.”

 

Now it’s time for Katniss’ cheeks to go nuclear. “Tell him what?”

 

She draws another heart, this time with KE + PM written below it.

 

“You know what.”

 

“Prim, I’m going to count to three, and if you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’m gonna —”

 

“He likes you!” Prim calls out, making another stupid kissy face. “He likes you and you like him. Maybe you should do something about that?”

 

Katniss slaps the glass. “What the hell are you talking about?”

 

“You like me?”

 

Gone is the strange — but still kind of attractive — scowl on Peeta’s face. In its place, a ridiculous grin that has the weird butterflies in her stomach doing complicated gymnastics routines.

 

“That’s really what you’re choosing to take away from all this?” she says, because what place to butterflies have in all this, really? “Not that our siblings are basically holding us hostage?”

 

“Oh, we’ll get them back later,” he assures her. Gently, he takes her shoulders and guides her off a little to the side, on an angle where Prim and Rye can’t see them as well. He drops his hands and shoves them in his pockets. “But, yeah, that’s what I’m choosing to take out of this.”

 

“God only knows why I like you, then, with stupid priorities like that.”

 

His smile spreads impossibly wider. “So, your vastly more logical choices must be the reason I like you, then.”

 

Something ridiculous does a happy little flip in her stomach. “I mean, yeah, if we’re talking logically and all.”

 

“So logically,” Peeta starts, taking another step closer. He’s so close now she can smell the cinnamon and dill rolling off him. “You should know that if you agree to maybe see a movie or something with me after my shift’s done tonight, they’ll probably let us out.”

 

She shrugs, trying for nonchalance. “Somehow, that seems like taking the easy way out, like we’re just giving into their demands. You don’t negotiate with terrorists, Peeta. It’s literally the first rule.”

 

“Taking the easy way out doesn’t always mean losing, Katniss.” He beams at her, looking just the tiniest bit like an idiot. And adorable. God damn him. “And besides, if it’s easier, doesn’t that also make it the logical thing to do?”

 

“I don’t like how you’ve turned this around on me.”

 

He smiles again, but this time it’s different, more special, more for her than any other. “Katniss, would you like to go out with me some time?”

 

She sighs, like it’s all a huge burden, while her heart kicks back to life. “Fine, I guess. But only to get out of here faster.”

 

Peeta nods, but he’s still smiling that smile. “Of course.”

 

“For now, though, I’ve also got a sister I need to get back at.”

 

Peeta’s smile turns almost devilish. “I’ll help you out with yours if you help me with mine?”

 

Katniss glares at Rye, who’s still dangling the keys around like they’re pet treats she and Peeta need to jump for. A smirk twists her lips and stays there. Oh, the fun they’re going to have. What a beautiful foundation on which to build a relationship. “Deal.”


	21. And During...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is rated E
> 
> Written for @amazinglovers747

His lips and teeth moving over her neck burn like a brand. She arches into the touch with a drawn-out moan, racking her nails down his back hard enough to draw lines. She feels his lips spread into a grin as he does it again, and again and again and again, enough times to send her spiralling out of her mind.

 

He slides his lips up, meeting hers in one quick, pillowy kiss before he presses his forehead against hers. Her hands grab for his hair, needing the anchor. She’ll slip right off the edge of the earth without him to ground her.

 

He kisses her again, the heat and adoration in the single gesture enough to take her breath away. “Katniss,” he says, reverent like a prayer. She runs her fingers over the line of tension in his jaw, the throbbing vein in his temple. A bead of sweat hangs precariously on the end of his nose; some strange instinct makes her want to lick it away. “You okay?”

 

She nods, gasps. Every slight movement has him hitting a new place inside her. “I’m fine. You can —” Her words trail off on a moan when he rotates his hips just so. “God, move, please!”

 

He nods desperately, breath falling in deep, quenching pants like he’s just run a marathon. “You sure?”

 

She lets out a whine and drops her hands to grip his ass. The slight tug buries him to the hilt, and it’s all she can do to keep her eyes from rolling back. How did they go so long without knowing this? She’d always thought girls were exaggerating when they talked about this changing a person.

 

“Please, Peeta?”

 

His grin turns into something feral, almost; she’s never seen that look on his face before. He braces his arms on either side of her head and drops his body along the length of hers: forehead to forehead, chest to chest, toes to toes.

 

“Okay.”

 

Her fingers grip the sheets. It’s a little uncomfortable at first — he’s just so _thick_ inside her, pulling at things she never could have imagined existing — but it wanes quickly under his gentle touch and steady, even thrusts. After that, it’s all instinct and sensation, erupting in colours and sparks and flames around her.

 

And through it all, Peeta.

 

He watches her through half-closed eyes for any whimper, whisper, sigh, or moan she can give. The pride on his face when she so much as squeaks makes her want to roll her eyes, but the intensity, the closeness, the sheer intimacy of it all floors her. The glint in his eyes and the heat of him all over and inside her, the scent of them together — of dill and spice, and lavender and sweat — has her so close to that unnameable _something_ all the girls in school used to talk about.

 

But it’s an elusive thing, there and gone again in seconds, and his movements are erratic. She’s impressed he lasted this long, considering what little she knows about the act. With Peeta, though, she’s desperate to learn all she can.

 

“Katniss,” he murmurs. He closes his eyes and curses under his breath, slows but never stops. He kisses her again, and she chases it when he pulls away. “Are you… close?”

 

She grits her teeth as he hits another especially sensitive place inside her. “I…”

 

“Do you think you can come?”

 

She’s not certain, but just as she’s about to tell him it doesn’t matter, that they have all the time in the world to get this right, his hand drops between them, finding that spot between her legs that has her crying to the ceiling and her toes curling against the sheets.

 

“Right there.” She gasps. She grasps around his neck hard enough to leave marks, but she can’t find any purchase on his slicked skin. “Right there, Peeta. Don’t you dare stop.”

 

His answering laugh is strained, but he does as she says. His fore and middle fingers make tight, surprisingly steady circles against her, and it sends the coil of need winding back up again inside her. That unnameable something is in reach if only she could get a little closer, closer —

 

“Katniss, Katniss, Katniss,” he chants against her lips like a spell. It’s too cliché to say there’s magic in the moment, but when he stills his movements and spills inside her, and she follows with a wild cry only seconds later, there’s no other way to describe it. The air between them is tight with the most incredible magic she’s ever known.

 

He falls against her, his head dropping to her breast. His tongue peeks out to sweep through the valley between them, and she almost laughs at how desperate he seems to touch her now. But she’s no better. She runs her hands through his matted hair, bringing the curls back to life, while the sound of their panting breaths fill the cool bedroom, bright with their love and moonlight.

 

Her eyes are closed when his hand cups her cheek. His lips fall against hers like there’s nothing else in the world he’d rather be doing. Even the taste of his kiss is something different now, something better than before. She swallows it all and wants more, all he can give her, and she’ll do the same.

 

“You love me,” he says when he pulls away, watching her carefully. “Real, or not real?”

 

“Real, Peeta,” she tells him as she pulls him back against her chest. “It’s always been real.”


	22. Something New

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for @d1163
> 
> A sort of prequel story to chapter 10, 'Meeting the Parent'.

It’s not every day you fall in love.

 

Or any day, really, if you’re anything like Peeta.

 

And yet, Peeta’s been spending the better part of the last four months falling with Katniss Everdeen. Over and over and over again.

 

It’s a strange sensation. One he both relishes and wishes more than anything that he could banish.

 

Because the person you fall in love with should not, in his mind, be one of your employees. Or almost fifteen years your junior. These factors in combination are not a romance waiting to happen.

 

He’d called in his brother to get a second opinion when he hired her. She’d hit him like a truck when she breezed through the bakery door with her resume in hand and the most determined expression he’d seen on an interviewee that morning. The interview went right over his head, and he couldn’t be certain in the minutes that followed that he hadn’t given her the job because she was the most radiantly beautiful woman he’d ever seen. After going over all the applications, his brother agreed that Katniss was, in fact, the best qualified person for the job. Objectively and all. Without having ever seen her incredible grey eyes, or heard her sultry, smoky voice.

 

While that helps Peeta feel somewhat less gross, it does nothing to lessen the feelings that have only bloomed and widened in the weeks and months since.

 

Even now, as he painstakingly ices a row of cupcakes, those feelings are a broad chasm a mile deep splitting down the middle of him, and he’s not sure how he’ll ever bridge himself back together again.

 

Because he’ll never — _never_ — act upon them. Feelings shouldn’t exist in the first place in a chronically-single, thirty-seven-year old guy for his twenty-three-year old employee. It’s a gross headline waiting to happen. People will picket in the streets and demand his removal from society, and he’ll go along with it because he kind of agrees with them.

 

Some days it’s all right. He can stick his feelings into neat little boxes and still be a decent boss, get all his work done and go home at the end of the day with that pleasant ache that tells him he’s done a good job.

 

Other days, it’s terrible. Some days he can’t get through a batch of cheese buns without being distracted by the sight of her working beside him. Or by her voice at the counter talking to customers. Or by her gentle presence beside him in the kitchens as they chat about everything and nothing, trading jokes that leave him breathless and her with her shoulders shaking. Or by the brushing touches as they move back and forward that he’s sure aren’t intentional but happen all the time anyway. Those days, he overworks batches of dough to the point of uselessness and can’t ice a single dandelion to save his life.

 

Today… is not a good day.

 

He draws out icing petals with trembling hands as Katniss loads the dishwashers behind him. They’re the only two left for the day, but he’s not sure why. The cupcakes need to be finished for a wedding tomorrow afternoon, so he knows why he’s still here. But the dishes aren’t a priority, and he can crank up the radio and load them up himself later, so why is Katniss still here when she should have clocked out over an hour ago?

 

“You know you can go, right?” he tells her again. Another piece of icing curls into a perfect petal.

 

Pans and muffin trays clatter as she loads them. “It’s fine. I don’t have anything else to do, anyway.”

 

He huffs out a quiet laugh. “That’s hard to believe.”

 

“Well, it’s true.”

 

The doors of the dishwasher click shut, and the rush of water through the bakery’s old pipes echoes like a waterfall in the small kitchen space. She wipes her hands off on her apron and comes to a stop beside him, leaning against the bench to survey his work. A little too close for comfort, Peeta thinks. His heart thuds like he’s a teenager with his first crush. He takes a short step sideways, just enough to expand the scant centimetres between them. He refocusses his attention to the cupcakes; the air feels like it’s been sucked out from between them.

 

He clears his throat. “You’re off now, then?” he asks, forcing cheer into his voice.

 

She traces circles in the layer of spilt icing sugar on the counter. “I can stay and help a little longer, if you want?”

 

He shakes his head. Another icing petal falls a little less neatly than the previous one. “I’ll be fine, Katniss. You go home and enjoy your night, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

Too many seconds of silence pass between them, but Peeta’s too afraid to move. The burning heat of Katniss’ gaze bores into him like it’s trying to force him out of his skin.

 

She lets out a loud breath in a whoosh and says, “Do you think I’m stupid?”

 

His eyes shoot up and meet her grey one head-on. She stares at him with her arms crossed like he’s the one that did something wrong. Did he hear her right? “What did you say?”

 

“Or blind, maybe?”

 

He gawks at her. Most unattractive, he’s sure. “Excuse me?”

 

“Because I’m starting to wonder if you are.”

 

“Katniss.” He sets the piping gun down and wipes the excess icing off his shaking hands. Has he been too obvious? “What are you talking about?”

 

She studies him like an odd curiosity while the pipes groan and creak in the background. The sound covers the quickening pounding of his heart as the palpable sensation of her gaze washes over him, a real thing that burns like fire over his skin.

 

Whatever she finds, it’s enough to make her take a step forward, narrowing the space between them again. Peeta swallows and grips the edge of the bench tight enough to turn his knuckles white.

 

“I _know_ , Peeta,” she says. “Johanna told me.”

 

The tips of his ears burn. He’s going to fire his assistant manager in the morning, especially if she gave Katniss the sort of talking to that she promised she would give her after snapping at him last week. A sick feeling rises in his stomach; he crosses his arms to keep it from going anywhere. “Told you what?”

 

It’s her turn to blush. On her olive-toned cheeks, it’s a milder colour, but no less gorgeous, and not something he’s ever seen before on her. He bites back a smile at the sight of it.

 

“I’m gonna kill her,” Katniss mutters, the scowl on her face so sharp and violent that Peeta feels momentarily sorry for Johanna. Katniss shakes her head and steps back towards the door. “I knew she was just messing with me, the lying sack of —”

 

Before she can dart out the door — and never set foot back through it again if the way she’s acting is any indication — Peeta catches her gently by her wrist, halting her frantic words. Her pulse flutters like hummingbird wings beneath his thumb, but he wonders: how much of it is hers, and how much of it is his? His heart feels like it’s about to leap out of his throat.

 

He strokes his thumb back and forth over the thin skin. She doesn’t pull away, or tense, or anything else that might tell him that the touch is unwanted. If anything, she melts into him, tipping her head towards him, though she still won’t look up.

 

“What did Johanna tell you?” he whispers.

 

“That you… that might… maybe? Have feelings for me?”

 

Her words twist up at the end like a question. She’s never been anything other than completely sure of herself — of everything — with him before. The new hesitance creeping into her tone throws him for a loop. The tiny seed of hope in his stomach grows and blooms within him, but he can’t be sure. Not yet.

 

His voice is so low he’s not sure she can hear it over the whoosh of the pipes. “Why would she tell you that?”

 

She still won’t look up, but she lets him keep painting circles on her wrist with his thumb. “She, uh… she told me we were both idiots, that if I didn’t say anything, that she would. Because I… I…”

 

She trails off, the apples of her cheeks bright red. He sucks in a deep breath, summons every final vestige of courage hibernating inside him, and asks, “And if I said that it couldn’t work between us, that I’m far too old for you… what would you say?”

 

Her gaze shoots to meet his, eyes alight with a spark of defiance that almost makes him laugh. “I’d tell you not to be so damn stupid,” she snaps. “I’d tell you that I’m a grown-ass woman who is more than capable of thinking for herself, and that I’d kick you to the curb so fast if you so much as _thought_ you could take advantage of me.”

 

He smiles. “You absolutely would.”

 

She turns her hand and laces their fingers together. “You’re also not too old for me. Or out to take advantage. You’re not a bad person for having feelings for me, and I know that’s exactly what you think of yourself, that you’re some kind of filthy pervert or something. And you’re not the sort of person who would turn into a complete dick just because you got what you wanted.” She twists their hands up and drops a kiss to his knuckles. He’s too shocked to move.

 

“You’re a painter,” she goes on, waving at the artworks that litter the kitchen walls. “You’re a baker. You like to bake with all the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces.”

 

His breath leaves him in a rattle. All the fight has drained out of him, and he’s not sure he’s strong enough to keep fighting against the one thing he’s wanted for months now, especially when she’s making it so clear that she wants him, too. “And if I said that it’s all true,” he says after a long moment. Giving in has never felt so wonderful. “That I do have feelings for you, and have done for a while… then what?”

 

She shrugs, angles her gaze to the ground. The tops of her cheeks are bright red now, but there’s a smile tugging her lips that he finds absolutely dazzling. “I guess I’d say that I… do as well.”

 

He tugs her closer and wraps his arms gently around her waist. She fits there like a dream, and when she follows suit with her arms looped around his neck, he feels lighter than air. “So, if I asked you to hang around here until I was done so I can take you out for dinner later… what would you say?”

 

She smiles at him, and it’s as radiant as the sun. “I guess I’d have to say yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seven stories (chapter 16 onwards) were uploaded here today. Go back and see if there's any you missed :)


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